


a world alone

by ephemeralsky



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Flirting, Healing, M/M, POV Andrew Minyard, Pining, Slow Burn, Softness, wooing via literature and cheesecakes and pumpkin carving and high school dances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-01-22 20:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 54,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12490040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralsky/pseuds/ephemeralsky
Summary: “It will not be cheap,” Andrew finally says.“I know,” Wymack says. “Two bottles of Johnnie Walker sound good to you?”“Four,” Andrew says without missing a beat. He thinks about having to deal with Nicky later on, about the additional work he has to do, and decides that he will not do anything for less.“Three,” Wymack argues.“Four or we have no deal.”Wymack mutters something about blood-sucking hooligans under his breath before he concedes with a, “Fine.”(or: a High School AU where only some of them are high-schoolers)





	1. quiet afternoon crush

**Author's Note:**

> TWs: descriptions of scars. additions will be made for the upcoming chapters, but please don't hesitate to let me know if i'm missing anything
> 
> this fic is not beta'd, so please also feel free to correct me on any mistakes you see
> 
> title of fic and chapter is from lorde's "a world alone" and "supercut" respectively because i'm not creative

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that _the loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly_.

Andrew knows all about being alone and being apathetic to the destruction around him, but he is not eloquent in the language of loneliness. As a matter of fact, he much prefers being alone than being surrounded by people and all the noise they create.

There are certain raucous moments where this preference makes itself known like an angry bull. A few examples: the din of bumbling students moments before the bell rings to signal the start of first period; the incessant chatter of his coworkers in the teachers’ lounge; the blare of trashy pop songs that Nicky puts on full volume while he sings along to them.

But the angry bull holds no candle against the giant wall that is Andrew’s unyielding state of apathy. With a fleeting clench of his fist and a blink of his eyes, his irritation clears away as soon as it comes. It’s convenient, he thinks, to not be able to feel anything. It allows him to keep his job, for one.

If it means he can have some peace and quiet, then he would take being alone and lonely over anything.

Fitzgerald was a douche anyway.

Andrew squints – he refuses to wear his reading glasses in public – and continues crossing out wrong answers, circling right ones, and jotting down percentages and grade letters at the top right corner of the papers in front of him. But the bright red ink glaring from the pages isn’t distracting enough to blot out the conversation around him.  

_Durand is leaving? That’s what she said this morning. She’s moving to Portland to live with her parents. Wait, I thought she’s French? Her parents are, but I’m pretty sure she was born here. I wonder if she’ll get to keep her baby. I hope she does. God knows what an awful father her husband would be._

The door to the lounge opens and slams shut. It is enough to warrant a cursory glance from Andrew, but he loses interest as soon as Wymack announces, “Good to see you fucks eating up gossip as usual.”

Alvarez, chemistry instructor and social riot, gasps theatrically. “Principal Wymack! Watch your language, for heaven’s sake!”

Wymack heads over to the coffee machine to refill his mug. “I don’t need to be polite with you problematic lot.”

Dermott, biology instructor and the calm before any storm, offers Alvarez a forkful of salad. “That was a pretty good impression of a white suburban mom.”

“Thanks,” Alvarez says, leaning forward to accept the food offer.

Renee, geography teacher and humanity’s hope, asks, “Is she holding up well?”

“I gave her half the day off. She’s already gone.” Wymack stirs some sugar into his drink and takes a sip, sighing tiredly afterwards. “Has a court date and all that. I don’t want her thinking about work for a while.”

Miura, history and government teacher and tenacious realist, comments “Finding her replacement is going to be a headache” without looking up from his lunch.

“Don’t get me started,” Wymack mutters. He spots Andrew sitting in one corner and raises an eyebrow. “Minyard. Never thought I’d see you here.”

Andrew looks up at him. Blinks. Returns his attention to the stack of papers in front of him.

Wymack snorts. “I suppose even you wouldn’t be crazy enough to go outside in this weather.”

Right on cue, a boom of thunder shatters the sky and the glass windows judder against the resonance.

If Andrew were in a particularly instigative mood, he would have corrected Wymack by saying that he had originally planned on going up to the roof regardless of the storm, if only to prove that he might just be _that_ crazy, but as it is, he lets the comment go unchallenged.

Renee sends him a good-natured smile; she had corralled him into the teachers’ lounge with a Tupperware of double-fudge brownies on his way to the stairs, lightning crackling in the distance. He had stared at her, then at the brownies, and back at her again as he said, “I am not sharing.”

Stomach filled with sweets and fingers itching for a cigarette, Andrew spends the rest of his lunch break grading his students’ dismal quiz papers. They clearly have not been doing their assigned readings.

“Will there be any problems?” Dermott asks, face calm but fingers twisted around the tail of her head scarf in a gesture of restlessness. Today, she is wearing a baby blue shawl, the color similar to the pastel blue at the tips of Renee’s bleached hair.

“I don’t know yet,” Wymack answers. Andrew can still feel his eyes on him.

“Let us know if you need any help,” Renee chimes in.  

Wymack nods at her. At the door, he says, “Minyard, meet me in my office. Be there in five or you’ll be without a job before fifth period starts.”

Andrew knows it’s an empty threat, so he is tempted to simply ignore the order and stay where he is until the end of lunch period. Sitting in the lounge isn’t too much of a headache since the teachers have advisory periods during lunch break on certain days of the week, which means that all of them are never gathered together at the same time in the same place to eat. But he also has to admit that he is rather tired of sitting among his co-workers, with their idle chatter and inane complaints and misplaced concern, and their inquisitive stares serve to add to his annoyance.

He caps his pen and goes out into the hallway.

It’s quiet, given that most students are in the cafeteria. Some linger near the lockers and outside the classrooms, but aside from passing glances, Andrew receives no interruptions as he makes his way towards the principal’s office.

Wymack is clacking away on the keyboard with his eyes digging holes into the computer screen when Andrew enters. He sits down on one of the two chairs opposite of Wymack and begins rearranging the folders, the penholder, and the mini bucket of succulents into a random order on the desk.

“Stop that,” Wymack snaps without looking away from the computer.

Andrew sticks a pencil into the soil of the succulents before he picks a book up, flips through the pages, and tosses it back among its companions. Wymack’s desk isn’t necessarily untidy, but the room on the whole is. Behind him, pressed against the windows, is a shelf filled with binders and folders. Those that aren’t stuffed onto the shelf and the filing cabinets on the adjacent wall are stacked on the floor around the desk and along the walls, and there are dirty mugs crowning some of the piles. There are a few pictures hanging on one side of the wall, flaunting some of the school’s pride and joy – photos of the football team, the academic decathlon team, the volunteers involved in the carwash fundraiser that they do twice a year, and the founders of the school.

It’s unimpressive and cramped and not how most principals or deans keep their offices, but David Wymack isn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill civil servant, and Firefield Charter High isn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill high school.

Wymack stops hammering away on the keyboard, leans back on his squeaky chair, and heaves a sigh.

“Midlife crisis, Principal Wymack?”

“That would be preferable to the actual crisis I have in my hands,” Wymack says, picking up his mug and draining the last of his coffee.

Andrew stares at him, waiting to see where this plays out.

Wymack returns Andrew’s empty stare with a solemn one.

“I need you to fill in for Durand,” he says.

Andrew has always appreciated his straightforwardness, but that is as much appreciation he can muster upon hearing those words.

“No,” he says simply.

Wymack is not new to this kind of rejection, so he doesn’t falter in the least.

“She teaches two classes and her leaving would be a big blow to us all, to the kids. You’re the only one aside from her that knows German well enough to teach it.”

“Is there suddenly a shortage of substitute teachers in the east coast? The last time I checked, there are plenty of substitutes that would be more than willing to take up the opportunity for a job.” 

“You and I both know it’s not that easy,” Wymack says, displeasure carved around his mouth. “People steer away from us, no matter how badly they need a stint.”

Andrew flicks his fingers dismissively. “I do not see how this is my problem.”

“Andrew, I’m asking you for a favor here.”

“And I am telling you that I am not certified to teach German.” This is true, but even Andrew knows that it’s a weak excuse. People teach more than one subject all the time, if they have enough knowledge on the matter and if the school is desperate enough.

“I wouldn’t be asking you if I had any other choice,” Wymack presses on.

“What about French?” Andrew points out blandly. “Don’t tell me you have recruited the librarian to take over that class.”

Wymack exhales noisily, clearly frustrated. “Alright wiseass, I know that this isn’t what you signed up for, but Durand is leaving soon and she has to deal with a divorce process while being seven months pregnant. She’ll still handle French until she leaves, but I was hoping to take some burden off her shoulders by –”

“By relegating her duties to me.” Andrew taps a finger against his thigh, meeting Wymack’s unwavering gaze. “And how long am I expected to teach her class?”

“Until I find a sub or a permanent replacement. Two weeks tops, depending on how busy HR is at the districts office. I had planned on finding a sub for when she’s supposed to have her maternity leave anyway, so I might as well.”

Andrew plucks the pencil out of the cluster of succulents and deposits it back into the penholder. He remains silent for a while, staring at the stern creases on Wymack’s forehead. The rain patters violently against the windows and the trees sway at the mercy of the howling winds.

“It will not be cheap,” Andrew finally says.

“I know,” Wymack says. “Two bottles of Johnnie Walker sound good to you?”

“Four,” Andrew says without missing a beat. He thinks about having to deal with Nicky later on, about the additional work he has to do, and decides that he will not do anything for less.

“Three,” Wymack argues.

“Four or we have no deal.”

Wymack mutters something about blood-sucking hooligans under his breath before he concedes with a, “Fine.”

Andrew tips his head to the side, bored. “Anything else?”

“No, thank fuck. I’ll go grey by the end of the day if I make any more deals with you.” Wymack turns back to his computer and waves a hand towards the door. “Now get out.”

Andrew topples the penholder over but doesn’t stay long enough to watch the items roll across the desk. He shuts the door on Wymack’s disgruntled “God damn it, Minyard.”

*

“Get some vegetables,” Nicky reminds him when he stops by the curb. “I want broccoli and spinach. And chicken. Maybe some turkey too.”

Andrew doesn’t say or do anything to show that he heard him, staring at the windshield, the wipers moving back and forth unerringly.

Kevin shifts awkwardly in the backseat, fiddling with the seat belt.

“Andrew, we need to eat proper food once in a while,” Nicky tries. When Andrew continues to ignore him, he groans and pops open the car door. “Fine, be like that. I’ll see you in ninety minutes. Come on, Kevin.”

He hugs his clarinet case close to his chest to shield it from the drizzle and runs out of the car and into the building that houses a music studio on the third floor, Kevin on his heels.

Andrew locks the doors and drives towards the nearest Safeway. It’s a Thursday evening, which means that not a lot of people would be doing their grocery shopping, which means that it is a suitable time for Andrew to do his.

He secures a parking spot close to the entrance, managing to stay relatively dry with the help of the umbrella he keeps in his car at all times. It is past the monsoon season, and the storm that arrived that morning had come out of nowhere. Andrew likes the weather how he likes everything else: predictable and nonthreatening. The muddy streets caused by the continuous rain is also an annoyance he wants to live without; the Maserati does not look as good when it is covered in dirt.

Andrew pushes his cart around the store, dumping in packets of Oreos and Chips Ahoy with astounding uncaringness. In his defense, he never really does much of anything with feeling, since he doesn’t actually care about anything.  

He grabs a few boxes of Cap’n Crunch and Lucky Charms, adding a pack of Frosted Flakes after a brief consideration. One can never have too much sugary cereal in one’s household. Two large bags of marshmallows and a box of Capri Sun are hauled into the cart alongside a dozen chocolate bars of various brands.

He passes by the produce section and thinks about whether he should get some vegetables and fruits. If he does, it will give Nicky expectations, and he can’t have that. But if he doesn’t, Nicky will not stop yapping about it, and he can’t have that either. He decides to go for the middle ground and bags a bundle of celery and some jalapeno peppers, forgoing the fruits section entirely. The huge pumpkins on sale offend him.

He mentally runs through his grocery list and squares away the remaining items – frozen pizzas, ice cream, donuts, jumbo-sized jars of Nutella. He begrudgingly throws in some raw chicken on his way to the dairy section.

He leaves his cart a little away from where the refrigerators are lined up, right beside someone else’s so that they are essentially blocking the path. He adds chocolate milk onto the pile of food items before he walks further down the aisle, past the blocks of cheese and butter until he reaches the eggs. Distantly, he contemplates them.

Eggs are graded according to the interior quality and shell appearance, and their sizes are measured as net weight per dozen eggs. There are three categories of egg grades and five categories of sizes. Egg types include standard white eggs, standard brown eggs, nutritionally-enhanced eggs, free-range eggs, and organic eggs. He knows all about eggs. Andrew prefers his to be grade AA, extra large, and white.

One morning when he was thirteen, he helped Cass prepare breakfast and he cracked open two eggs to discover that they were double-yolked. The chance of getting one double-yolk egg is one in a thousand; he had gotten two, which raises the chance to one in a million. He had felt extremely lucky back then. Two weeks later, he found out that he had a twin, and two weeks after that, he was shipped away to a juvenile facility.

He’s never found a double-yolk egg again after that. Right now, that is what he is thinking of as he surveys the cartons of eggs in front of him. 

He has been so caught up in his egg-centered thoughts that he almost misses how the customer standing next to him is also staring at the eggs with a faraway expression. His red hair is dripping with rain water, falling over his eyes in a sopping mess, and his dark grey hoodie has wet splotches over the shoulders and back. Andrew is rather surprised that there isn’t a puddle around him. From the side, his cheekbone looks sharp enough to cut through a watermelon.

He seems to be moving on autopilot, his mind miles away, as he selects a case of large free-range eggs and turns away from the freezer, shuffling towards the cart next to Andrew’s, his running shoes making squelching noises. Except, he’s putting his eggs into Andrew’s cart and is about to steer it away when Andrew strides up behind him and impassively says, “That’s mine.”

The man halts, looks down at the items in the shopping trolley, and says, “Oh.”

Pushing his hair out of his face with one hand, he retrieves his eggs and puts them carefully into the child seat of his cart with the other. The ring looped around his right helix flashes silver under the bright lights of the store.

He turns to look at Andrew, and Andrew, whose face is painted in a perpetual state of indifference, feels the slightest widening of his eyes in surprise; while the right side of the man’s face is unmarred, the other half is not. There is a burn scar that runs from the bottom of his left eye to his cheek, the skin warped like melted plastic. This disfiguration, however, does not negate his attractiveness in the least.

The man notices his staring before Andrew himself does.

“Enjoying the view?”

His voice is as icy as the blue of his eyes, and the undercurrent of defensiveness amidst the sardonic tone doesn’t escape Andrew’s ears.    

“There is nothing to enjoy,” Andrew says flatly, meeting the man’s gaze.

The small upturn at the corner of the stranger’s lips carries a weight of self-depreciation. “I know,” he says, turning his face away. It makes something unpleasant descend into the pit of Andrew’s stomach, and he almost wishes that he had said something else, something less wounding, even as he convinces himself that he doesn’t care about offending a stranger. Offending others is a panacea, if anything.

“Sorry for almost running away with your cart.” The man makes to go, hands on the handle of his cart, but pauses when his eyes catch the mountain of food in Andrew’s trolley. Both of his hands, Andrew notices, are also covered in a patchwork of scars, like they had been dipped in a sea of fire and thorns.

Andrew goes to stand next to him, hiking a foot up on the bottom rack of his cart, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket.

“Problem?” he asks.

The stranger slides his gaze over to Andrew’s eyes. “No,” he says, but there is a hint of derisive amusement in his voice. “I was just marveling at the quantity of sugary stuff you’re planning to buy.”

“I was not aware that the store has hired a calorie police.”

“Hey, I’m not judging you. Just making an observation.”

“Perhaps you should keep your observations and opinions to yourself.”

The man gives Andrew a half-smile, sharp and thin like a blade. “Perhaps,” he says. “But I’ve never been good at keeping my mouth shut.” He shrugs, then taps two fingers to his temple in a mocking salute as he pushes his mostly empty cart away, giving Andrew no time to retort.

Andrew watches him until he disappears into the next aisle, his shoes leaving a wet trail behind him. There is an odd feeling in Andrew’s chest, one that he doesn’t have time to think about as he chooses a carton of eggs and lines up to pay for the groceries; it is time to pick Nicky and Kevin up from music practice.

When he is in the car, swerving in and out of traffic, he realizes that the feeling is the embers of interest.   

*

As Andrew has foreseen, the transition doesn’t go without a fuss. The first day he entered German class, everybody had fallen quiet instantly; they would have been able to hear the drop of a pin with how still it was. The students had exchanged glances, and it was wordlessly and unanimously agreed that Nicky should be the one to voice what they were all wondering and thinking about.

“Andr – Mr. Minyard?” he had started, “I think you have the wrong classroom?”

Andrew had stared at him, then at the rest of the class. They had stared back for a second, before averting their eyes and squirming in their seats. Andrew had said “Take out your workbooks” and he had thought that that had been it.

Of course, nothing is ever that easy.

Nicky has been intolerable ever since – _why didn’t you tell me you were gonna teach German, does this mean I get a blanket pass, tell me I do, you’re such a harsh grader, we’re all either gonna die or fail this class, are you still teaching English lit, where’s Ms. Durand going, does it have anything to do with her baby, she told us it’s gonna be a boy, isn’t she supposed to have her maternity leave next month, what’s going on_ – and Andrew, who is used to Nicky’s unending nattering, could have easily stamped down the supreme irritation building inside of him if not for the lesson plan that Durand has given him over the weekend. The lesson plan isn’t much of a plan at all, which means that Andrew has to study the syllabus she prepared, revise it, and comb through both the textbook and the workbook from start to finish to see which parts are relevant before including them in his own lesson outline. He doesn’t normally do this for his literature class, but he has never given language lessons before, and even a self-destructive and unmotivated person like him knows better than to dive head first without any form of strategy.  

He can never understand why some people would ever want or agree to teach more than one subject when they wouldn’t even get paid more for it, regardless of whether they have the certifications or not.

The class meets three times a week, and if Wymack upholds his promise, Andrew only has to do this gig for two more periods, one on Wednesday and one on Friday, before he can pass the baton and drop everything off on whoever the new hire will be.

Since it’s still early in the semester, Andrew’s lessons consist mainly of having the students memorize words and expand their vocabulary, which isn’t complicated, but not everybody has an eidetic memory, and Nicky has been lamenting the number of new words he has to retain by the end of the week. With the exception of a few students who are also taking Andrew’s literature class, the others are still too scared to even make eye contact with him, which works fine for him.

On Tuesday, after a smoke break on the roof of the main building, Andrew traipses his way to the library, and is greeted with the sight of Jeremy Knox, algebra instructor and personified sunshine, leaning far too close over the counter, lips stretched in a too-big grin. The recipient of his attention doesn’t seem to notice, busy with something on the computer. They both look up at Andrew’s entrance, and Jean Moreau, head librarian and chronic frowner, greets Andrew with a serious, “Need any assistance today?”

Andrew waves a dismissive hand, making his way past the counter and towards the rows of bookshelves. If he stops even for a second, Knox is undoubtedly going to try to engage him in a conversation, and Andrew always makes sure to avoid his attempts at friendliness like the plague.

He meanders through a few empty tables and chairs and passes by an area with several armchairs, where a couple of students are taking a nap. Moreau hasn’t done his rounds, then.

At the classical literature section, Andrew drums his fingers along the book spines until he finds what he came for. He takes it out of the shelf and brings it up to the counter, where Knox is mercifully absent.

He hands his faculty card to Moreau, who efficiently checks his book out for him. One of the things that makes Moreau tolerable is that he doesn’t speak to Andrew unless he needs to, but this is stained by the fact that he spends quite a lot of his time with the likes of Knox and Alvarez and Renee, and their influence has gradually turned him into a decent and communicative person, which Andrew considers to be a demerit.

“I heard you’re teaching German for a while,” Moreau says, and since he still has Andrew’s book, Andrew doesn’t have the option to simply turn away and leave. There is no question in that statement, so Andrew says nothing in return.

“Let me know if you need any additional resources for that. We have a number of things you can use, something from the video archives, if you’d like.”     

Andrew doesn’t grace him with a reply, holding an expectant hand out. Moreau purses his lips, but the book exchanges hands without further talking.

*

Leaning against the wall next to a congested bulletin board, Andrew plays with his lighter, thumbing the lever and sparking it. Sometimes, he lets the small flame burn long enough for his thumb to sting. When he tires of this, he pockets the lighter and rubs the pad of his smarting thumb against his forefinger. He’s only out a little early because he had handed out quizzes in the last period and all of the students finished it with plenty of time to spare. He’ll spend a lovely time grading the papers come this evening, he’s sure.

When the final bell rings and students flood into the hallways, he finds who he’s looking for easily, and waits for their eyes to meet. Even though she has a habit of slouching, Robin Cross is still tall for her age, and she spots Andrew just as quickly, trying to make herself small as she wades through the throng of students.

Andrew is already holding out Robert Graves’ version of _The Iliad_ , and her eyebrows raise as she scans the cover and the title. He flicks his wrist to lob it at her, and she barely catches it, leaping forward and pressing it against her stomach.

“T-thanks, Mr. Minyard.” She tucks a strand of her jet-black hair behind her ear, looking down at the book in her arm. “This will help me out a lot.”

Andrew shrugs. “You cannot expect to write about the Trojan War without having read _The Iliad_.”

“Have you ever read it?”

Andrew gives her an unimpressed stare.

  
“Stupid question, sorry,” she says hastily.

“I have,” Andrew says, because he doesn’t mind talking to Robin, not really. “I had to.”

Robin smiles, unconfident like a flower out of season. “I figured. Literature majors have it tough, huh?”

With the conversation taking a direction towards some of his least favorite topics – himself and his past, Andrew pushes off the wall and heads for the exit.

“Thanks again,” Robin calls out.

Nicky, appearing all too eager, is already waiting by the Maserati when Andrew reaches the parking lot. The key fob is in his hand, but Andrew doesn’t unlock the car.

“Andrew,” Nicky whines, tugging at the handle of the passenger-side door. “Let’s go! I don’t want to be late for work.”

He has been acting odd about his job in the past couple of weeks, buzzing with restless energy. Andrew is sure that Nicky is racing his rotor for something other than a four-hour shift at a dingy diner, and he isn’t driving Nicky anywhere unless he gets some answers first.

“Your manager has never cared about tardiness,” he states monotonously. “There is no need to rush.”

“That’s – he, uh, he just instated a new rule!” Nicky proclaims, “If any of us are late, he – he’ll dock our pay.”

Andrew is a terrible liar, but Nicky is downright the worst.

“Nicholas,” Andrew says, pinning his cousin down with a heavy stare.

Wringing his hands in a telltale sign of nervousness, Nicky looks down at his feet.

“That’s a lie. I’m sorry,” he mumbles. He takes a deep breath, his next words uttered in the whoosh of a breath, “It’saboutaguy.”

Andrew taps his fingers on the roof of his car, studying Nicky’s face for any traces of a lie. When he doesn’t see any, he unlocks the car. “As long as you are not involved in any illegal activities.”

“I promise I’m not!”

Once they’re on the road, Andrew says, in a clinical tone, “I hope you have been paying attention during sex ed.”

Nicky looks absolutely horrified. “Andrew!”

“Well, have you?”

“I’ve only known him for three weeks! We haven’t done anything beyond talking to each other!”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Jesus, yes, I’ve been paying attention!” Nicky groans into his hands. “Are you happy now?”

“A foreign concept, but I am quite satisfied for now.”

The rest of the drive goes by in silence, which is rare since Nicky is in the car, but Andrew figures that he’s still flustered by the preceding conversation. Andrew is almost amused at the thought of rambunctious Nicky being embarrassed by awkward adolescent matters. Teenagers are all plagued by the same banal horrors, he supposes.

Well, most teenagers.

*

After dropping Nicky and Kevin off for their music class on Thursday, Andrew goes to do the grocery.

This time, he sees the scarred side first. The man with the auburn hair has a plastic bag in one hand and a cigarette in his other, held up closely to his face. He doesn’t smoke it though, letting it burn slowly without taking a single drag. He’s wearing an expensive-looking dark grey suit, something that might cost more than two months of Andrew’s salary, his hair coiffed neatly, his dress shoes free of dirt. He looks nothing like how he did when Andrew first saw him last week.

He is notably short, but vexingly has a few inches over Andrew.

Andrew comes up next to him, facing the parking lot. Out of the corner of his eye, Andrew sees the man turn to regard him.

“The sugar inhaler,” he says, head tipped to the side in acknowledgment.

“The cart thief,” Andrew returns.

“The _almost_ cart thief,” he corrects, the amusement palpable in his voice.

Andrew fishes out his pack of cigarettes and shakes a stick out, lighting it up and taking a deep drag. The familiar acridness in his throat and lungs is welcomed. He exhales a stream of smoke through his mouth before he says, “Do you need a demonstration on how to properly utilize that thing in your hand?”

He looks at the man, his eyes more piercing than Andrew remembers them to be, which is funny, since Andrew’s memory is perfect.

“I wasn’t aware that the store has hired an enforcer of smoking etiquettes,” the stranger says, affecting confusion.

Having his words thrown back at him makes Andrew feel equal parts annoyed and intrigued. He watches how the smoke curls around the man’s fingers like a snake. He shouldn’t say anything further, nor does he have to. His taciturn nature makes it that he rarely speaks to anyone, and a pretty face doesn’t warrant enough reason or motivation to talk, especially not when there is no guarantee that he will gain something out of the interaction. But the witty comebacks and the scars make it rather compelling, so Andrew says, “It is a waste of nicotine.”

The burnt skin on the man’s face twist as his lips form a crooked half-smile. Andrew wonders if he can only ever smile that way; disingenuous and caustic, a double-edged sword to hurt others and himself.

“It’s not the nicotine I’m after.”

Curious and curiouser.       

As if to contradict himself, the man puts his cigarette between his lips and inhales, the cherry a bright red. Smoke rolls out of his mouth languidly as he taps the ash off, giving Andrew an impertinent look.

“And you? Are you addicted to nicotine?”

Andrew doesn’t answer for a while, finishing his cigarette without breaking eye contact. He takes one last puff and blows the smoke into the man’s face before dropping the stub and grounding it out beneath his shoe. He considers the words he wants to say, and settles for the simplest, most ominous form of answer.

“It is a nice and slow way to kill yourself, is it not?” 

All traces of playfulness leave the man’s face, but it isn’t replaced by censure or shock, like how Andrew expects it to. His eyes are like the ocean, reflecting the orange glow of his burning cigarette, and Andrew pretends that it isn’t understanding he sees, swirling in the outrageous blue. 

“It is,” he agrees, staring for a while longer before diverting his gaze.  

Shoppers come and leave through the automatic doors. A store worker herds in a train of trolleys. A sleek black Audi rolls to a stop in front of them. The stranger offers Andrew his unfinished cigarette. Andrew takes it.  

“That’s my ride,” the man says. “If we’re lucky, we might meet for a third time.”

Andrew looks at the car, then at the clump of ash falling from the end of the cigarette. He contemplates the concept of luck and good will, and how they have eluded him all his life.

“If I am lucky, I might never have to see you again.”

Impossibly, the corner of the man’s eyes crinkle, like Andrew has just told him an inside joke. “Don’t forget to brush your teeth after you eat all your sugary junk,” he says as a parting remark, opening the passenger door and slipping inside.  

Andrew tracks the taillights of the car until it disappears into traffic. He takes a drag from the cigarette, replaying the image of the man doing the same, his blue eyes curtained by a waft of smoke.

*

On Friday after school has ended and before Lisa Durand’s farewell party starts, Wymack tells Andrew that he’s found a substitute teacher who will take over Andrew’s duties. Andrew thought that Wymack would have looked more pleased at this, so he is almost rather puzzled when Wymack stressfully massages his temple, eyes closing momentarily. 

“Now I owe Reynolds one,” he grumbles quietly. When he notices that Andrew is staring at him, he shoos him off. “It’s nothing. Go mingle with your colleagues.”

Andrew doesn’t go off to mingle with his colleagues because he prefers not to and because Wymack can’t get him to do things as easily as he would like to believe. Since Durand’s departure is rather abrupt, the party is simple and unremarkable, but the students had given her various gifts, and they sit in an obtrusive hill next to the gift basket Dermott had bought by getting the teachers to chip in and cover the cost.

The huge mahogany table where they usually sit for their meetings is covered with a white plastic cloth and spread over it is a humble array of snacks. While Andrew scans for something he might want to eat, Renee walks over and strikes up a conversation with him. He doesn’t look at her, but he listens, and he doesn’t say anything until she asks, “Won’t you come over to rehearsals sometimes?”

He flicks her an uninterested glance, dumping a slice of pecan pie on his paper plate.

“The kids would appreciate it,” Renee continues, smiling at him, her hands clasped behind her. “You could help with the scripts.” The flowy maroon skirt she’s wearing matches the color of her lips. She’s re-dyed the tips of her hair back to pink. Andrew thinks he likes the pastel blue much better. Or the rainbow colors she sported before and during summer break.

“That sounds like a lot of responsibility and I want no part in it.”

“Robin told me you’ve been helping her with her writing,” Renee says, trying a different tactic.

Andrew waves his plastic fork around, sending crumbs flying. “That is news to me.”

Her smile remains unwavering. “Well, if you ever change your mind, you know where to find us.”

Andrew says nothing, shoveling food into his mouth.

The door to the conference room cracks open a little, and Danielle Wilds’ head pops into view. Wymack notices her and follows her out into the corridor, with Bee appearing at the doorway moments later.

Bee pushes her wire glasses up her nose, cheeks crimped with dimples as she smiles amicably at Andrew, her grey-streaked chestnut curls clipped on one side with a green barrette.

“Hello,” she says to both him and Renee.

Andrew nods at her. “Bee.”

“Are you well?” she asks. “We haven’t talked in a while.”

The one-shouldered shrug he gives seems ample enough for her, because she smiles a bit more brightly, the cluster of crow’s feet around her eyes deepening.

“I trust that you and Nicky aren’t giving each other too much grief?”

“Then you trust too much,” Andrew says dryly.

“I suppose I do,” Bee laughs, before moving on to other topics, ranging from the weather to some of the blunders that happened since the academic year started. She never talks about any of the students’ issues that she deals with though, because she takes confidentiality clauses very seriously. It’s one of the reasons why Andrew likes Betsy Dobson, the school’s psychologist and guidance counselor.

“But,” Bee is saying, “the most exciting news this week is the prospective hire.”

“You’ve met them?” Renee asks.

“I haven’t.” Bee takes a bite of the chocolate cake on her plate and dabs at her mouth with a napkin before she continues. “But David already interviewed them with the HR director down at the districts office.”

“For appearances’ sake, I’m guessing,” Andrew says, “since beggars cannot be choosers.”

Renee’s mouth flattens in disapproval, but even she can’t deny Andrew’s point.

Bee, much more experienced in dealing with Andrew’s brand of callous veracity, only smiles. “David says their papers and credentials look solid.”

Renee’s demure smile returns. “So we’ll have two new teachers then. That’s exciting, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure if it’s one or two, but yes, it’s very exciting.”

Andrew licks some pie filling off his fork, done with this conversation, but he sees an opportunity for a hit and says, “Wymack mentioned something about getting Reynolds’ help with finding the new hire.” Sliding his aloof gaze over to Renee, he asks, “She did not say anything to you about this?”

As expected, Renee nimbly deflects the jab. “I don’t think she did. Allison is not obligated to share everything with me, after all.”

Andrew is now officially clocked out of this conversation, bored out of his skull. Unbidden, his thoughts drift to the scarred stranger, to the peculiarity of his mannerisms and words.

 _If we ever meet again_ , Andrew thinks, _if we do –_

If, if, if.

*

With a gasp that wrings out of his throat like glass shards, Andrew wakes up reaching for his knives. They’re wedged between the mattress and the wall, with a couple hiding under his pillow. He doesn’t keep them sheathed in his armbands anymore, because he promised Wymack years ago that he wouldn’t bring any weapons to school. 

Nightmares are not new, but it’s been a while since he woke up with the violent urge to draw blood. He lies still on his back, heartrate frantic and muscles locked, sweat sticking to him like barnacles on a stranded vessel. He fixates his gaze on the small, web-like cracks in one corner of the ceiling that’s existed since he first moved in, staring at it until his breathing evens out.

Then he kicks off his duvet, pulls on his armbands, and slips out to the balcony through the living room, where he proceeds to chain-smoke until the exposed wires of his nerves burrow back under his flesh. It tastes a bit like defeat; he had started to limit himself to two or three sticks per day ever since Nicky moved in with him, and he never smokes when he’s at home, but here he is, crushing his fifth cigarette butt against his dollar store ashtray.

Maybe he’s a _little_ addicted to nicotine.

With night lifting to welcome dawn, Andrew goes back inside, starting the coffee percolator and thumping a hard fist consecutively against the door to Nicky’s bedroom. He only stops when he hears a croaky, whined out “okay, I’m up, I’m up” from the other side.

He normally eats cereal for breakfast, but since he’s awake earlier than usual, he decides he might as well make pancakes. It’s always good to know that he can be a little kind to himself, rare as it is. As his former psychiatrist, Bee would probably be proud.

The coffee machine is gurgling and wheezing when Andrew cracks open an egg into a bowl and freezes. Looking back at him are two golden circles of a double-yolk egg.

He might have continued to stare, unmoving, if not for Nicky appearing at the doorway to sleepily say, “If you’re making pancakes, save some for me,” before disappearing down the hallway to the bathroom.

Andrew blinks. Finishes making breakfast. Drinks his coffee. Gets ready for work. Doesn’t think about the first and last time he saw a double-yolk egg.

He blasts the radio up loud enough to drown Nicky out, and his cousin gets the hint halfway through the drive to school and zips his mouth shut.

Against his better judgment, Andrew goes up to the roof of the main building for a smoke; the rest of the school is a no-smoking zone, a policy that had him scouring the school grounds and picking the locks to various doors on his first day. He had wrestled with the heavy door that leads to the emergency staircase, then wrestled harder to unbolt the creaky metal door that accesses the rooftop. Let it be known that Andrew Minyard is willing to expend some effort if it means he can find refuge from other people.  

He finishes his seventh cigarette of the day a few minutes before the bell rings. He wastes no thought about the mandatory morning meeting he has skipped. With the bitter taste of ash in his mouth, he trudges down the stairs and shoves the steel door open. There is a loud thud, a garbled _fucking hell,_ and a startled _oh my god_ on the other side, and Andrew steps away and releases the door, letting it slam heavily against its frame.

Bent forward slightly with a hand on his bleeding nose is the stranger from the supermarket, vicious blue eyes thawed by the surprise at seeing Andrew, whose own surprise is probably not reflected on his face.  

Before either of them can say anything, Vice-principal Ortiz shrieks, “We need to get you to the nurse’s office, Mr. Josten!”

“I’m fine,” the man says, voice muffled behind his fingers, blood dripping down his chin, but he lets himself be ushered away, darting Andrew a glance over his shoulder.

Andrew stares after him. In the isolated south wing of the building, the halls explode with the wail of the first bell.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the first time i'm writing an AU for this fandom, and i'm?? so?? anxious?? but also kinda excited because i've been working on this for a while now and i have a ton of things planned out. also why did i decide to write everything in andrew's pov again what the fuck was i thinking
> 
> the whole school thing isn't accurate/realistic, i know. it's all sewn together from my limited knowledge of american high schools, my own experiences, and from what i've seen and heard from my mom, who was a high school principal for a decade and an economics teacher for two. 
> 
> let me know what you think of this. i am nothing but a simple insecure potato 
> 
> also hmu on my [tumblr ](http://nakasomethingkun.tumblr.com)


	2. violent overnight rush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Acquaintances are made. Suspicions are aroused. Some laws are broken, some threats are made. There is a cat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs: description of scars, threats of violence.  
> please let me know if i need to add anything else.
> 
> this fic is not beta'd and english isn't my first language, so feel free to correct me on any mistakes you see.
> 
> title of chapter is, again, from lorde's "supercut" because that song is the bomb dot com

Andrew walks down the hallway, parting the stream of students like a boulder in a river, and stops outside of what used to be Durand’s classroom. A pair of female students exit the room, heads ducked close together as they giggle and whisper, and when Andrew peers inside, he sees none other than Nicky, chatting up the newest addition to their teaching staff.  

Neil Josten looks a little different in his semi-professional attire – different from the wet mess and the image of untouchable formality that Andrew’s seen him as – but the copper hair and burn scars are unmistakable. It gives the impression that he is going to change his appearance for every time Andrew sees him, which is a rather disconcerting thought despite its ridiculousness. His face is clean of any blood from this morning, and there isn’t any bruising or swelling on his nose.

Andrew catches the tail end of what Nicky is saying, something about changing their teachers for so many times when the semester has barely even begun.

“But you know what they say,” Nicky says, grinning ingratiatingly, “third time’s the charm.”

As if sensing that he’s being watched, Josten snaps his gaze over to where Andrew is standing by the doorway.

“Yes,” he tells Nicky, holding Andrew’s gaze, “I guess it is.”

Nicky follows his line of sight. “Andrew! Have you talked with Mr. Josten? He says he’s from Iowa, which is like, so cool. I’ve never met anybody from there.”

“Nobody is ever from Iowa,” Andrew comments blandly, stepping into the classroom.

“I think you just undermined the existence of the three million people who live in that state,” Josten says.

Nicky excitedly snaps his fingers. “Ashton Kutcher’s from Iowa!”

“Go eat your lunch, Nicky,” Andrew says.

“Oh, right.” Nicky slings his backpack over his shoulders. “My friends are probably waiting for me at the cafeteria. I’ll see you later, Andrew. Bye, Mr. Josten.”

When Nicky is gone, Josten says, “Andrew, huh?” Still standing, he knocks his knuckles against his desk, twice. Andrew tries not to stare at them. “Do all your students call you that or is Nicky an exception?”

“He can get away with it because we are unfortunately related.”

Josten smiles his half-smile. He isn’t wearing his helix earring. “That’s what I heard.”

“Oh?” Andrew steps closer to the cheap wooden desk, hands in the pockets of his black slacks. “And what else have you heard?”

“A lot of interesting things, all of which I’m sure you’re aware of.” Josten lowers his voice a little, imitating the tone of someone sharing a conspiracy, “I think that your co-workers and students have a penchant for gossip.”

“They are your co-workers and students too, now,” Andrew reminds him.

“I don’t think we should believe everything we hear,” Josten says, his chilly blue eyes calculatingly intent on Andrew.

Andrew stares right back.

“On a more light-hearted note,” Josten says, his gaze now less intense, “I’m sort of glad I can finally put a name to your face.”

This makes Andrew lift an eyebrow.

Josten’s half-smile grows into a full one, something not quite genuine, but not quite mocking either. “I don’t have to refer you to you as the sugar-eater in my head anymore.”

Andrew wants to analyze and break down that statement, wants to understand the implication that Josten has been thinking about him since their first two meetings, but for now, in the most indifferent voice he can conjure, he says, “Do you believe in fate, Mr. Cart-Stealer?”

“I don’t think I do, _Andrew_. Do you?”

A muscle in Andrew’s cheek twitches against his will. “Well then, _Neil_ , how about luck?”

“Only the bad sort.”

“Do you think it was luck that got you that nosebleed on our third meeting?”

 _Neil_ pretends to think about this. “No, I think that was just you.”

“I would blame the door.”

Scoffing, Neil plops down onto his chair. “Did you come all the way to my humble classroom to check up on my nose?”

Andrew doesn’t answer.

They stare at each other for a while longer, before Neil bends down to reach for his messenger bag and plucks out a granola bar. He probably has his advisory period today, which would explain why he’s still in the classroom.

“I’ve enjoyed this little ice-breaker, but I think you should go eat your lunch too.”

Neil unwraps the granola bar and bites a sloppy chunk off it, unaffected by Andrew’s judging eyes.

“Is that all you’re eating?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Andrew narrows his eyes at him. “I do not want to hear you speak about my eating habits ever again,” he says, then leaves for the rooftop.

*

“Any thoughts on the new recruit?” Renee asks.

Andrew takes a swig from his water bottle, sweat trailing down his temples. Renee sits beside him on the training mat and offers him a hand towel, which he uses to wipe his hairline.

“He is puzzling,” he finally says, knowing that he can admit at least this much with Renee.

She hums thoughtfully. “He seems to be wary of me.”

“I’ve noticed.” Which is just one of the many factors that makes Neil intriguing; not many people can see past Renee’s serene veneer of religiosity and benevolence. Most see the silver cross and the pastel colors and would never think that she has killed a man before. “Are _you_ wary of _him_?”

Renee stretches her legs out in front of her. “I think,” she says carefully, “that he is hiding a lot more than he lets on.” She cuts a look Andrew’s way. “Which is rather characteristic of people like us.”

“So you think he is more like us than he is the rest of them.”

She nods. “But that doesn’t mean I think he poses a threat to us, or to the students. The principal would have never hired him otherwise.”

Andrew doesn’t remind her that Wymack has a thing for people with troubled lives, including those whose background checks come back spotty.

“But you don’t think he is completely harmless.”

At this, Renee smiles. “None of us are. Did you know he stopped two fights from breaking out this past week alone? Both involved Jack and Seth.”

Those two are definitely troublemakers, and they’re probably a solid foot taller and a few pounds heavier than Neil. Students have to usually call a few of the male teachers to thwart them from creating a scene, so he supposes that Neil’s ability to do it on his own is cause for admiration.

After a short pause, Renee asks, “Is this why you find him puzzling?”

Andrew doesn’t say anything to that, crossing his legs and slouching forward to rest his elbows on them. He doesn’t elaborate that aside from the dangerous gleam that he occasionally sees in Neil’s eyes, there and gone like quicksilver, he has also noticed how incongruent Neil’s behaviors are when he is around Andrew and when he is around the others. He is vigilant around Renee and much more so around Wymack, which is endlessly interesting, and he is reserved around the other teachers and staff members, appearing unassuming and opting to stay in the background. But with Andrew, he has no such qualms, often razor-tongued and outspoken with his opinions. It’s not like they’ve spoken much to each other since that first day; their interactions consist mostly of passing glances and wry one-liners.

During the rare times that Andrew attends meetings and has his arms on the table with his sleeves rolled up, he notices Neil staring intently at his black armbands, like he can drill holes into the fabric with the sheer force of his gaze, like he knows exactly what Andrew is hiding on his skin.

Renee chuckles. “Well, the others seem to like him, the students especially. They haven’t been this excited since Jean transferred here last year.”

Ah, yes. Andrew has heard all about how _exciting and mysterious and – what’s the word? Enthralling!! Mr. Josten is. And his scars make him look_ so _tough and cool_. _And he’s really good with his tongue – don’t look at me like that, Andrew, I only meant that his German doesn’t have an accent!_

Nicky has not shut up about it, which, since it’s Nicky, isn’t too surprising. Even Kevin has said something about Neil’s adequately-structured French lessons, which, coming from Kevin, was quite the compliment.  

Breaking into Wymack’s office and finding Neil’s file was like taking a walk in the park, but it only contained non-useful things like his resume; things that can be forged rather easily. Andrew did, however, notice that he doesn’t have a criminal record, but that doesn’t mean much. Some of the worst people in the world have gotten away with the terrible things they do.

The issue is not that Andrew doesn’t trust him, because Andrew doesn’t trust anyone. The issue is that Andrew knows that Neil is not a teacher by profession. Granted, he is only a substitute, but the suit he wore when Andrew saw him for the second time at the store was too tasteful and expensive for a regular public servant, let alone an undervalued sub teacher. Then there was the Audi.

When Andrew looked him up in the database, his name wasn’t listed, but Andrew surmised that it might be because he is from out of the district, if not from out of state. He evidently has ties to Reynolds, which indicates that he’s part of the elite.

Usually, Andrew will see the female soccer team practicing on the field adjacent to the parking lot after school, Reynolds standing on the sidelines with her hands on her hips as she barks out criticisms. If he was a different person, he would have approached her and asked a bunch of questions. But he isn’t, so there goes that idea. Besides, there is always Renee.

“Does Reynolds have an opinion on him?”    

Renee seems entertained by this question. “You’ve never cared about what she thinks.”

“I don’t.”

Still smiling, Renee gives a small shake of her head, like she should have known better. “Allison’s been tight-lipped about it. She only says that she trusts him.”

Andrew tilts his head to the side and says, “And you trust her.”

“I do,” Renee says.

If the gossip-mongering Reynolds refuses to say anything, then maybe it is safe to assume that Neil Josten’s secret – which Andrew knows he has – is bigger than Andrew first thought. It could also mean that someone like Allison Reynolds, with all of her political and social prowess, doesn’t have the ability to touch him.

The issue is not that the warning bells in Andrew’s head are ringing, because if they are, Neil Josten wouldn’t even have stayed for as long as he has. The issue is that Andrew is _interested_ , in more ways than one, and he hasn’t been interested in anything in a long, long time. Being interested means having a toy he can play around with, but it also means he will discard it when the novelty is gone and the boredom inevitably sets in.

He’s well-acquainted with the cycle by now, and he should know better than to give in to these fleeting distractions; the crash gets worse each time and he is left emptier than before.

“Shall we go another round?” Renee says, getting to her feet and rolling her right shoulder.

There is some time before he has to pick Nicky up from work, so Andrew stands across Renee and gets into a fighting stance. He’ll be sore for the rest of the weekend, but that, at least, is something. 

*

Once in a blue moon, because he has to, Andrew goes to school early to prepare his lesson materials. He goes early enough that only the custodians are present, that there is no one around to bother him. Nicky would catch a ride with somebody else – usually Matt. He can barely wake up on time on a regular day, and Andrew lacks the courtesy to wait for him on days that he wants to be at school early.

When he makes it to the printing room, the door is slightly ajar and the lights are on. There is a small squeak the door makes when it’s pushed, and this is the sound that makes Neil jolt as if he’s been electrocuted when Andrew enters the room. He’s in fight-or-flight mode, right hand reaching for his pocket like he is about to pull out a weapon, his eyes wild with panic, dark shadows prominent underneath them like he hasn’t slept at all over the weekend. Andrew stills, taken aback by the spooked reaction.

As soon as Neil sees it’s Andrew, though, he visibly relaxes, draping a nonchalant demeanor over the previous fear as easily as breathing. The change is so fast and smooth that if Andrew were anyone else, he doubts he would have even noticed it.

“Andrew,” Neil says, voice carrying a calmness that Andrew knows to be faked.

“In the flesh,” Andrew deadpans, stepping over next to him by the copy machine.

“Didn’t think anyone would be here this early.” Neil shrugs, picking up a stack of papers and dropping them on the surface of the desk to square the edges up. “Better you than something else, I guess.”

Andrew thinks over the reaction he just saw. “Something else,” he echoes. “Don’t tell me you are afraid of ghosts.”

Neil looks at him like he knows Andrew is probing him. “There are far scarier things in the world than ghosts.”

Andrew glances at Neil’s hands, wonders where he’s hiding his weapon, what the weapon is. “Like a man with knives?”

Neil notices his glance and his lips twitch with the phantom of a mordant smile. “I wouldn’t be afraid of that here, would I? Since it’s a weapon-free zone.”

“You can never be too sure.”

“Being in a small room with only one exit makes me jittery. I think that’s a more reasonable fear in our current situation.”

 _A runner_ , Andrew concludes. “If worse comes to worst, you can always use the stapler or the paper trimmer behind you.”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “For self-defense?”

Andrew doesn’t humor that with a response. He sees that the topmost paper in Neil’s hands has the angry emoji, where the face is red and the eyebrows are scrunched downwards, and it’s blown up to cover the whole page. The color of the emoji is not unlike the color of Neil’s hair.

Neil drops his gaze to the papers as well. “It’s for my classes.” He shuffles them and holds a few up for Andrew to see; there’s the sad emoji, the grinning face, the shrugging girl, the animal faces, buildings, and food items. There are even ones with the creepily smiling moon and sun.

“Look,” he says, holding a piece of paper up beside Andrew’s face, “it’s you.” With a solemn nod, he remarks, “Uncanny.”

Andrew slides his gaze to the page and sees the apathetic emoji, eyes blank and mouth a thin line. Then he looks at Neil again, severely unimpressed and probably proving Neil’s point.

Neil sucks his lips in, no doubt to stop himself from laughing, and Andrew is almost disappointed. Almost.

“And what will you have your students do with them?”

“I’ll probably start by quizzing them, see if they can give me a name for the stuff on each page. Then probably have them draw a few out randomly and make sentences or phrases based on the words they got.” Neil flips through the stack. “I thought it might be fun.”      

The cuffs to Neil’s shirt is loose enough that when he moves his arms, they rise a little to show the ring of scars around his wrists. It looks to be torn skin that had scabbed over and didn’t heal very properly, but now seems as healed as it can be, old and settled like erosions on weathered mountains, as do the burns on his cheeks. It’s rather a wonder that the rumors surrounding Neil Josten aren’t more extravagant; his appearance alone would be excellent fodder for mythmaking among the students and teachers for years to come. A veritable mystery if Andrew’s ever seen one, all wrapped up in an attractive package.

“How long have you been teaching,” Andrew asks, voice lacking any inflection like it usually does. He makes copies of the quizzes he’s handing out later this week while Neil staples his own packets of worksheets together and stacks them on top of the printed emojis.

“For a couple of years. Not too long.”

 _And a liar_ , Andrew adds to his conclusion. But a very good one.

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Do you?”

“You seem to be in the habit of answering a question with another question.”

“Do I? Wonder how you got that impression.”

“That tactic is getting stale.”

“What can I say? I live to disappoint.”

Andrew slams the stack of paper in his hands onto the work desk that Neil is using. This makes Neil look up at him, cool eyes meeting Andrew’s blank ones.

“On the contrary, you are proving to be the opposite of a disappointment.” Andrew tilts his head to one side, just barely, scrutinizing the man in front of him. “I can’t seem to make heads or tails of you.”

“And you want to solve me? I’m not a math problem, you know.”

“I want nothing,” Andrew informs him, a simple truth, “but I will still solve you anyway.”

Neil smiles thinly. “We’ll see.”

*

Neil’s welcome party comes three weeks after his arrival and six weeks after school has started, arranged by a suspiciously enthusiastic Alvarez, who decides that it can be Halloween-themed, _since it’s already October anyway!_ Most of the teachers are going, and so are some of the other staff, including Moreau, Bee, and Abby, school nurse and unofficial girlfriend of the principal. 

Andrew, on the other hand, ducks out of the event by simply not acknowledging its existence, much to the surprise of absolutely nobody. It takes some coaxing from the others to get Neil to attend, and he only relents because Altherr, English teacher and unrepentant Brussel sprouts advocate, tells him that there is no point to the party if he doesn’t come since it’s held in his honor.

Andrew seizes the opportunity like a shark chomping down on its prey.

He’s parked his car a few blocks away and is outside of Neil’s apartment building half an hour before the party is supposed to start, standing across the street so he can see when Neil leaves. He had remembered the address when he went through Neil’s file, but it hasn’t struck him until then that the apartment complex is located in a pretty affluent neighborhood.

The Audi that picked Neil up from the supermarket skates out of the garage and he slides into it when he exits the front doors. Andrew thinks it is unfortunate that Neil has a chauffeur, because he has such a nice car and he doesn’t even drive it himself.

Andrew waits until the car rounds the corner to cross the road. It’s a high-security building, but Andrew is prepared for that possibility. You need access codes to enter the front doors and a different set of access codes to enter the elevators. But like all other apartment complexes, it has a fire exit that faces the back alley, and Andrew spends a good portion of his time picking its locks. He supposes he’s lucky that it’s not secured with a keypad lock too.

Andrew makes it to the tenth floor by climbing the emergency staircase, calves burning and breath labored. Serves him right for neglecting cardio ever since he graduated college.

The corridors are quiet, the lamps on the wall glowing a dim orange, and Andrew steals across the carpeted floors at a calm but brisk pace. Picking the locks to Neil’s door is a whole demon of its own, and beads of sweat appear on Andrew’s forehead even as he remains patient and unruffled in the air-conditioned hallways.

His knees creak when he gets up from his crouched position and opens the door. When he shuts and locks it behind him, he is enveloped in darkness. The moonlight streaming in through the large, curtained windows of the living room outlines the interior of the apartment, and Andrew’s eyes soon adjust to the dimness.

A brush against his legs has him tensing and pulling his knife out, but he breathes again when he hears an indignant meow. From what Andrew can see, Neil either has an incredibly big cat or an incredibly tiny lion living with him. He sheathes his knife, steps over the creature, and uses the flashlight on his phone to meander through the place.

It’s a spacious condominium, and Neil is not much of an interior decorator if the bare walls and scant personal belongings are anything to go by. The first door Andrew checks leads him to what seems to be a training room, with a punching bag hanging from the ceiling, a rack of dumbbells pushed to one side, and a treadmill on the other. There is a television in the living room and a closed laptop on the coffee table with a copy of _The Idiot_ , in its original Russian publication, resting beside it. Andrew only recognizes it because he’s seen the Russian title before and it’s automatically stored in his memory.

He’s caught Neil talking in Spanish to some of the students and Nicky a few times; Neil is proving to be quite the multilingual.

There is a folder of worksheets on the kitchen island that Neil is probably going to be grading over the weekend, but aside from all these, Andrew doesn’t find anything substantial. The second door he checks leads him to the bedroom, and the cat-lion hybrid follows him across the threshold and hops onto the queen-sized bed. It meows again, bitter at the lack of attention it’s receiving.

Because there is no one around to witness him doing it, Andrew strokes the underside of the cat’s chin and feels his hands grow less clammy the more the cat purrs. Then he gets back to business and examines the room for any clues that would help him unravel the mystery surrounding Neil Josten.

In the streets below, the sirens of police cars penetrate the night before fading away.          

He has a hunch that if there’s anything important that Neil wants to keep secure, it would probably be archived in digital form, which would make snooping around a rather void cause. But as he told Neil, one can never be too sure. His efforts aren’t completely fruitless, because in a locked drawer on the bedside table, he finds a file with _Firefield_ scrawled in marker over it.

A press against the back of his skull prevents him from extracting the folder. Instincts and experience have him stilling completely, but his heart is thudding frantically against his ribcage; aside from Renee, no one has ever managed to sneak up on him, not since he was –

“Stand up,” Neil Josten commands, voice remote. “Hands above your head.”

Andrew, for once in his life, does as he’s told.

“Turn around.”

Andrew turns. Illuminated by the silver light of the moon, Neil looks surreal, blue eyes cold like glaciers. His jaw clenches around barely restrained fury when he registers who it is.

“Andrew,” says Neil.

“Neil,” says Andrew.

Neil’s finger curls around the trigger of his handgun.

“You should have told me you wanted to stop by. I would’ve cleaned the place up a bit.”

Andrew takes stock of him, the mocking incline of his head, the simmer of anger in his eyes, the cord of tension in the lines of his shoulders.     

“Your cat has been very welcoming of me,” Andrew says evenly, tamping down the urge to draw his knife. He calculates the probability of overcoming Neil in a fight and doesn’t like what he comes up with. Andrew is broader, probably stronger, but he doesn’t know the extent of Neil’s capabilities, and his rough, street-fighting style that was born out of desperate self-preservation might not be effective on Neil.

Unexpectedly, Neil barks out a sharp laugh, cruel in its falsehood. The remnants of his wicked smile still on his lips, Neil digs the fingers of his free hand around his mouth, as if he doesn’t want Andrew to see the expression on his face.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you.”

“You’ll disturb your neighbors. They will be asking questions.”

“There are various ways to keep a person silent.” Neil drums his fingers against his jaw in contemplation. “Cutting their tongue off for one.”

“How unoriginal.”

Ruthlessness carves itself around Neil’s features, his anger coiling beneath the surface. “You shouldn’t have gone through my things.”

As if that sort of logic has ever stopped Andrew from doing what he sets out to do.

“Why are you here?”

“I already told you,” Andrew says then, “I am in the process of solving you.”

“There isn’t any need to.”

“Oh, Neil. Of course there is.”

“Even after this?” Neil asks with a pointed look at his Glock.

“Especially after this.”

The air is pulled taut like a strained wire that’s on the verge of snapping as they stare each other down. It only dissolves when the humongous cat winds around Neil’s ankles and meows imperiously at him.

The tension bleeds out of Neil’s shoulders. With a sigh, he drops his hand and pulls the safety on his gun before slipping it on a belt holster, hidden from view by his jacket.

He crouches down to scoop his cat in his arms.

“Well, let’s talk this over, then,” he tells Andrew as he leaves the room.

Andrew blinks once. Lets his hands fall. Wonders how he managed to escape an execution.

Outside, the lights have been switched on and the cat has been deposited onto the kitchen counter, where it observes Andrew’s every move. Neil is talking to a burly man by the front door, a man who also has a gun. Andrew catches a shift in the way Neil speaks – he is talking to the man in a British accent. The man’s accent is much less posh, and he doesn’t sound very happy about what Neil is telling him.

“I can’t just leave you –”

“I can handle this,” Neil says, pushing the man out the door. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

“But –”

“Good night, Phil.”

Phil, whoever he is, shoots Andrew a glare, but obeys Neil and puts his pistol away as he leaves. So much for a being a regular government employee.  

After locking the front door and shucking off his jacket, Neil fills the kettle and puts it over the stove with more force than necessary. His movements are a little jerky, like he’s trying very hard to not let his temper get the better of him, but his face betrays none of it. He’s a skilled actor, Andrew will give him that. He’s wearing a long-sleeved black shirt with a cowl neck and a pair of dark blue jeans; he wears his clothes like Andrew does, covering almost every inch of his skin like an armor.

“Would you like anything?” he asks casually, dumping a teabag in an orange mug. “Tea? Water? Juice? A bullet between the eyes?”

Andrew levels him a stony stare.

“Nothing?” Neil prompts, feigning amicability. “Maybe you’d prefer some alcohol.”

“Maybe I would.”

“Too bad, then. There’s no alcohol here, since I don’t drink,” Neil says. He slams a glass in front of Andrew on the counter, water sloshing over the rim. Andrew’s surprised it’s not cracked.

Neil’s reverted to a non-British accent, but it’s different from his normal Midwestern cadence. His words carry a strange lilt to them, where there isn’t a distinct inflection that could indicate where he’s from.

His previously contained fury is oozing through the crevices of his mask, and Andrew is fascinated despite himself. Neil could have called the cops or he could have just killed Andrew and be done with it, but he didn’t, and it is somewhat satisfying to get a reaction out of him, to see him showing a genuine emotion without any of the frills. He looks _alive_ , a wildfire, and Andrew has always been prone to flirt with danger.

“I assume you did not go to your welcome party.”

Neil turns to him from where he was furiously opening and closing the kitchen drawers and cabinets, blue eyes cackling like flames. A twist of his lips brings forth his half-smile, but it carries a more pronounced edge.    

“I was there for about five minutes before I got a notification of a break-in.” He steps closer to the island, the only thing separating him and Andrew. “Guess now we know why you were a no-show.”

What Andrew wants to know is how Neil could have unlocked the front door without making any noise; he might be as stealthy as a tiger, but even he can’t control for the silence of his door. Andrew then remembers the loud sirens that filled the air for a few seconds – that must have been when Neil entered. But there aren’t supposed to be any surveillance cameras, Andrew was quite sure of that. Even though Andrew remains expressionless, Neil somehow notices his train of thoughts.

“The cameras are installed to be inconspicuous,” he explains, waving a hand around. “They’re hidden almost everywhere. People won’t be able to notice they’re being watched.” Oddly, his expression goes stiff at this. His cat pads around the island and bumps its head against his stomach. His face muscles loosen slightly.

“And I have a security system for my door. It doesn’t make any noise if there’s an intruder, but it’ll notify me if somebody comes in and doesn’t reset the alarm.”

“Men who go through such lengths to protect their homes must have something to hide,” Andrew states.

The glint in Neil’s eyes is full of vehemence. “You would know.”

“I am not the one with a gun on his hip.”

“This is America. Isn’t it normal for everybody to have a gun?”

“In other words, you are overcompensating.”

“That’s rich, coming from the man who drives a sports car.”

Andrew is exceedingly unamused, but so is Neil.

The cat nudges Neil again, and he runs a hand over its back.

“My people could’ve handled it, but I told them not to do anything until I get back, because I wanted to be sure that it’s not –” his hand stills from where it’s buried in his cat’s thick, white-and-black fur. “Well, I just wanted to be sure.”

 _My people_.

“Turns out it is just little old me.”

Neil sends him a fiery look. “What is it exactly that you want?”

“You are a conundrum,” Andrew says, in his typical unhelpful fashion.

“Under normal circumstances, I would take that as a compliment, but right now I’m just confused. Am I supposed to accept that as enough reason for you to break into my house?”

“Why are you at our school?” Andrew counters in a detached voice.

Neil frowns, incredulous. “Because I work there.”

“And you compile a laundry of information on every school you work for.”

“Why shouldn’t I? Isn’t it normal to do research on your place of employment?”

Neil’s play at ignorance only fuels Andrew’s suspicions, his gaze heavy on Neil.

The kettle whistles.

“You won’t stop, will you?” Neil scratches his cat’s ears. “You won’t be satisfied until you get some real answers.”

“I will get them one way or another,” Andrew affirms easily. “I always do.”

Neil turns away to switch the dial off on the stove and fills his mug with the boiled water.

In a quieter voice, he says, “I didn’t think too much of it at first, when I was called in for this favor.”

“Reynolds,” Andrew interjects, less a speculation and more an accusation. He wonders how Reynolds even knows him, but that question is less pressing for now.

“Yes, Reynolds,” Neil confirms with a glare. “But then I saw you again, and –” he pulls the string on the tea bag and bobs it around the water as it steeps.

“Well, I wanted to know if it was less about fate” – the word _fate_ is uttered with absolute scorn – “and more about a well-devised plan. So I had somebody run a background check on everybody at the school, and he was supposed to send me the ones that…stood out. But Phil is a bit old-fashioned and he gave me hard copies instead of just sending them through our encrypted server.”

The last bit is muttered in a way that suggests Neil is complaining about it to himself than he is explaining it to Andrew.

“All of you are clear of any ties with – well, you’re clear, and that’s enough for me. I should’ve burned that file ages ago, so that was my mistake.” His eyes are sharp when he says, “I don’t plan on doing any harm to anybody.”

Andrew doesn’t have to think hard about who could’ve been blacklisted and had ended up in that folder.

“That does not answer why you’re here,” he points out. “Are you even a real teacher? Who are you, Neil Josten?”

“I’m nobody,” Neil says offhandedly. “I owed Allison one, and my debts are cleared if I stay for the duration that I’m needed. I have some teaching experience, but if we’re being picky, then no, I’m not a teacher.”

Andrew cocks his head, waiting for an elaboration, even though he does have an inkling to what Neil might be.

Neil blows on his tea. “If I tell you who I really am, I have to kill you.”

“I would like to see you try.”

“Big words for somebody who had a gun pointed to his head less than fifteen minutes ago.”

“Are you part of the mafia?”

Neil sips on his tea, eyes trained on Andrew over the rim of his mug.

It’s all he’s probably going to get, but it’s enough.

“Will the nature of your actual job cause trouble for us?”

Neil blinks, like he’s surprised at how easily Andrew took that little admission in stride. “I wouldn’t have ever taken up this gig in the first place if that’s the case. And besides, I never said that was my profession.” His look turns appraising. “Is that what this is all about? You’re worried that I’m going to hurt somebody at school.”

Andrew makes a dismissive gesture. “I could not care less about that.”

“You’re not a very good liar,” Neil says, eyebrows raised. “So are we good now? Will you stop hounding me for answers after this?”

“You intend to stay,” Andrew says, not quite a question.

“Will you let me?” Neil challenges.

Andrew looks at him with a steady gaze. Even before he came in with his gun blazing, he’s always had a dangerous air about him; his scars alone are enough to corroborate that. If he had any tricks up his sleeve, Andrew or Renee would have noticed it already. And as much as Andrew hates to think about it, Reynolds wouldn’t have ever come to him for help if she knew that he would invite danger through their doorsteps.

And Andrew – well, he could always use this as a distraction to pass the time, couldn’t he?

“Stay, then,” he says.

Neil nods. “I’ll be gone by the end of spring anyway, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

Andrew wants to prod him into saying more, but Neil is tapping away on his phone, his mug in his other hand. His cat makes a high-pitched cry.

Neil pockets his phone, looking at his cat like a mother would at her infant as he coos, “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

“What’s its name,” Andrew asks.

“King,” Neil says, stroking the cat’s belly when it flops down on its back on the marble counter, “King Fluffkins.”

That is the stupidest name Andrew has ever heard, and he hopes the sentiment is conveyed through his astoundingly flat gaze.

Neil lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “Naming her Queen felt like a betrayal to the British crown.”

“That is not the point,” Andrew says, and Neil smiles a small smile, a fleeting quirk of his lips.

“You like cats?”

Andrew neither confirms nor denies it.

“You know, it’s dumb that you got caught, but I have to admit that I’m impressed you even got this far. I don’t know how you managed to pick the locks on the back door, much less the ones on my suite.”

“Oh? And does this make you feel threatened?”

“Only in the sense that I’ve met someone who can give me a run for my money.” Neil finishes his tea and picks King up, holding her to his chest. It’s almost commendable, how such a small man can carry such an enormous cat. “Don’t wanna brag or anything, but I’m pretty good with picking locks.”

“All talk and no action.”

“And you’re all action and no talk, huh?” Neil stares at him like he can’t quite place his finger on something, like Andrew is a question that throws him for a loop.

The doorbell rings, and Neil goes to answer it with an armful of cat.

“Maya,” Andrew hears him saying, “good timing.” The front door can be seen from where Andrew is standing, and he watches as a tall, olive-skinned woman exchange a few words to Neil in a language Andrew doesn’t recognize. He wonders if there is a limit to the number of languages Neil is fluent in.

Neil turns to Andrew again, tone succinct. “Ms. Lothfi is here to escort you. She’ll make sure you’ll get out safely.”

Andrew knows a threat when he hears one.

When he steps out into the corridors, Neil asks, in quiet German, “Are you going to tell anyone?”

Andrew doesn’t have to ask what he’s referring to. And isn’t it interesting, that for all of his cool bravado, he’s still anxious about being tattled on.

In a monotone, Andrew says, “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've rewritten this chapter about a dozen times and i still hate it, but i'm just gonna post it because i want to get on to the next part of the story where all the other characters appear more often ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> also come talk to me on my [tumblr ](http://nakasomethingkun.tumblr.com)
> 
> happy halloween y'all!


	3. perfumed with obsession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Punches are thrown. Numbers are obtained. Costumes are worn. More characters appear and actually have lines. Are pumpkins fruits or vegetables?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs: violence, implied/referenced abuse, descriptions of scars, implied/referenced islamophobia and ableism
> 
> please don't hesitate to let me know if there's anything else i need to add.
> 
> this fic is not beta'd and english isn't my first language, so feel free to correct me on any mistakes you see.
> 
> title of chapter is from lorde's "the louvre" (at this point y'all are gonna get tired of how blatant my lorde obsession is)

When they meet on Saturday morning to spar, Andrew doesn’t tell Renee any of the details from the previous night. He lets her know that Neil doesn’t pose a threat to the school, to which he internally scoffs; the juxtaposition of a guy who’s involved in the shady world of the mafia being called non-threatening is outrageous to him, and yet.

Renee only smiles, a little knowing and smug, and Andrew doesn’t even want to think about the sort of assumptions she’s making. The rest of the weekend goes by as usual – take Nicky and Kevin out for dinner on Saturday because he didn’t on Friday, make sure Nicky doesn’t play video games all day on Sunday, grade homework, read novels and books of poetry. He goes to the public library and checks out _The Idiot_ , in its English translation, and finds that his opinion of it still hasn’t changed much since the first time he read it in high school.

On Monday morning, he waltzes into the conference room and garners a few questioning glances from the few people who are there early for the daily meeting. He makes his way to one side of the mahogany table and sits on the chair next to Neil’s. Neil pauses from where he’s talking to Miura, but doesn’t spare Andrew a glance. He and Miura continue talking despite Miura’s less-than-covert looks directed towards Andrew. When a couple of other teachers arrive and divert Miura’s attention, Neil says, in German, “Is this part of your tactic to intimidate me?”

He’s not looking at Andrew and his voice is lowered, and Andrew replies in the same fashion.

“Can you even be intimidated?”

“Did you break into any of the others’ houses over the weekend? Miura and Altherr’s love nest perhaps.”

Miura darts his gaze over to Neil at the sound of his and his wife’s names, but Neil sends him a cordial smile and he looks away, expression still mildly curious.     

“Why, did you?”

Neil deigns to look at Andrew then, eyes full of disdain.

“You think you’re so funny.”

“And you don’t?”

Neil already has his mouth open for a retort but he closes it again, eyes gliding over to the other side of the table. Andrew’s eyes trail after the invisible line and find Knox and Dermott snapping their gazes away from the two of them and shuffling the papers in their hands. Alvarez though, with all of her tact and delicateness, says, “Since when did you two become friends? Did I miss the memo? Do I get to talk to Minyard now too?”

Andrew looks blankly at her.

Vice-Principal Ortiz, from her seat at the other end of the table, tries to salvage the situation from awkwardness. “Mr. Josten, how’s your cat? You left early on Friday night because there was an emergency about your cat, yes?”

Neil smiles again, plastic to the experienced eye. “She’s fine. It was just a false alarm. She even made a new friend.”

Andrew would have rolled his eyes if eye-rolling is something he does.

More of their co-workers file into the room with Wymack taking the rear. Predictably, he says, “Minyard, good of you to grace us with your presence this morning.” He takes a seat at the head of the long table and wrenches his tie loose even though the day hasn’t even technically begun yet. “One of these days I’m going to make all of you clock in and out at the main office so it’s harder for anybody to play truant.”

“Micro-management isn’t really your style, though,” Alvarez points out.

Andrew ignores all this and spaces out for the rest of the powwow. The heat of Neil’s presence beside him, however, is like an infrared radiation that follows him even when they all split towards their respective classes or make last minute preparations for the coming day. Neil throws one final look at him just before he rounds the corner down the hallway, and when their eyes meet, Andrew taps two fingers to his temple in a lazy salute.

*

“You managed to put all the key characters into the script.”

“I did, but I’m worried that it’s messy.” Robin fidgets with her mechanical pencil, clicking the end and pushing the lead back in repeatedly. “But if you think it’s fine then I won’t make any big changes to it anymore.”

“Hmm,” is all Andrew responds with.

He flips through the screenplay again, gleaning some of the grammatical corrections he made on the first read.

“I’ve shown this to Ms. Walker. She promised it’ll be used for the spring production.” Robin somehow interprets Andrew’s silence and even stare as an invitation to speak more, but Andrew doesn’t stop her. “It’s been a little hectic ever since Ms. Durand left. She and Ms. Walker had already enough of a hard time with the two of them, and now Ms. Walker is on her own, and she also has the nature club to manage.”   

It seems like everybody is trying to recruit him to the drama club lately. Nicky, too, has been bolder about broaching the subject to him. Things must really be in quite the calamitous state, but he trusts that Renee is capable of wrangling a bunch of wayward kids, despite Robin’s divulgence.  

He slides Robin’s script across the table. She looks tentatively hopeful. “You approve of it?”

Andrew flicks his fingers and removes his reading glasses. Robin takes this as a positive gesture and grins, unabashed and bright and unlike her usual dimmed smiles.

A gruff voice bellows out profanities somewhere in the corridors. A commotion follows, the type that accompanies petty brawls, and Andrew leaves it all to resolve itself. The teacher on hallway duty is often the one to dissolve the fight, and they might call on the help of a few others, like Knox or Hernandez. Sometimes even Wymack steps in. Renee does too, but only rarely; her involvement would usually be a sign of austere circumstances. 

Andrew, completely unbothered by the discord, stares at the scuff marks on his desk while Robin looks a little squeamish. Bee appears at the doorway then, looking all too harried.

“Andrew,” she pants, and Andrew is out of his seat and down the hallway in the blink of an eye. Andrew’s involvement would usually be a sign of insurmountably dire circumstances.

The students are flocked around the scene in a circle and Andrew forces his way through them. What he sees when he gets near the center, however, has him rooted to the spot.

Neil Josten is swiftly dodging a shoddy punch from a middle-aged man, elbows tucked in to his ribcage, chin to his chest, and fists raised. He then charges in with an upper cut, hitting his opponent in the ridge of his chin. The blow is hard enough to topple the man who is twice Neil’s size backwards, the lockers clanging as he falls against them.

Neil, though, doesn’t seem to plan on stopping anytime soon. Andrew sees the intent in his eyes, the calm anger that is telegraphed in his precise movements. He’s crouched down now, one hand grabbing a fistful of the man’s shirt and the other winding back for another blow. Andrew catches Neil’s raised hand then, gripping his wrist.

Neil’s reaction is immediate; he comes at him swinging, and Andrew releases his hold, barely evading the punch. His ear throbs from where Neil’s knuckles grazed against it.

Neil’s breathing has changed, judging from the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders. His eyes are cold, haunted, as he hisses a guttural, “Don’t _touch_ me.”

He doesn’t spare his fallen opponent a glance as he leaves in a cyclone of ice shards and whipping winds, the crowd parting easily for him.

Andrew takes a moment to recollect himself, stowing away Neil’s behavior to be dissected at a later time. Seth Gordon looks as if he’s gone through a few rounds in the ring as well, Abby and one of the students flanking him to keep him on his feet. No doubt it’s the work of the semi-conscious man groaning on the floor, whom Andrew recognizes to be Seth’s alcoholic father. He’s also pretty sure that the man has a few restraining orders issued against him.

It is not the first time the law has failed to protect the students at the school, and it will not be the last.

“What the fuck is going on here?” comes Wymack’s furious voice.

He comes to a halt next to Bee, whose expression is grim as she stares at the elder Gordon.

“He came to my office, drunk out of his mind, and demanded to see Seth. When I said he couldn’t do that, he just raged off,” she says.

“He won’t be able to do anything now,” Andrew comments calmly. “Not with a concussion.”    

“A _what_?” Wymack demands.

“Mr. Josten saved him,” one student says, “he saved Seth.”

“Yeah, I saw the whole thing!” another one chimes in.

“He punched Seth’s dad,” someone else adds, full of awe. “It was beautiful.”

“Boyd,” Wymack snaps, “make yourself useful and go help Ms. Winfield over there and get Gordon – the brat – to her office.”

“Yes, sir,” Matt Boyd says, skedaddling away to do as he’s told. He recruits one of his football friends to help him and they both easily tow Seth away, Abby tailing them after a quick, worried glance Wymack’s way.

To Bee he says, “Call campus security.” To Andrew he says, “Where the hell is Josten?”

Andrew stares at him.

Wymack is intelligent enough to understand that the bored stare means _how the fuck should I know_ , but he doesn’t let Andrew off the hook. “Find him and let him know I want a word with him.”

When Andrew remains immobile, he tacks on a growled “ _Now_.”

Partly because he doesn’t want to be involved in the clean-up and partly because he wants to sate his own curiosity, Andrew goes off to find Neil. He tries Neil’s classroom, the main office, the teacher’s lounge, the conference room, the cafeteria, the library. He even checks the restrooms, but he can’t seem to find any sign of a five-foot-three redhead. Fourth period has started a while ago, and he guesses that he and Neil are being filled in by a couple other teachers. It might drag on until the last period if Andrew doesn’t unearth Neil soon, which, in hindsight, works well for him.

If it were somebody else he was trying to find, Andrew would have scanned the parking lot to see if the person’s car is there, which would indicate that they’re still on school grounds. But Neil doesn’t drive to school, which brings Andrew to the bicycle shed behind the library to check if Neil’s bike is still there. It is, and Andrew is beginning to feel that he’s on a wild goose chase. Why does Neil even cycle to school anyway, when he has a perfectly decent car?

Neil hasn’t even spoken to him in over a week, probably still smarting from the whole break-in incident. He has, however, been watching Andrew more and more, sometimes warily, sometimes virulently, sometimes with something inscrutable in his blue, blue eyes. Even when Andrew catches him staring and stares right back, he doesn’t look away.

Andrew fishes out his cigarette pack and lighter; he’s grown agitated enough to completely defy the no-smoking policy. Unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, he finally realizes, _the roof_.

That’s where his search ends.     

Neil has his knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around his legs, a shell to protect himself. If he looked like an untouchable, ruthless machine before, he looks nothing like it now. He resembles a child more than anything in that very moment.

He’s perched near the edge of the roof, staring out into the distance, the afternoon autumn sky an azure blue. He doesn’t look up when Andrew sits next to him, and it isn’t until a while before he breaks the silence.

“I don’t like to be grabbed by my wrists,” he mutters without preamble. “I just – don’t like to be touched unexpectedly.”

Andrew brings the flame of his lighter to the end of his cigarette, takes a deep puff, and blows out a cloud of smoke. He thinks of the torn flesh around Neil’s slender wrists, uneven and jagged like the teeth of an old saw.

“I will not do it again,” he says.

The furrow between Neil’s brows is one of disbelief. “Just like that?”

Really, it isn’t Andrew’s problem if Neil chooses not to believe him. He won’t be the first to spit Andrew’s words back at his face. It really isn’t his problem, so he doesn’t know why he says, “I don’t like to be touched either.”

They skid off his tongue, floating into the space between them, vulnerable like an open vein. Perhaps they are summoned from the crypt of Andrew’s past by Neil’s own admission, lured out by another’s pain like they’re two morbid kids who are comparing broken bones.

Neil’s face settles in perfect understanding, his eyes clear. “Okay,” he says. Just like that.

Wisps of smoke from Andrew’s cigarette wafts in his direction. He closes his eyes for a moment, his frame unfurled like a ribbon. Andrew clenches and unclenches his jaw at the sight.

Holding his phone out, Andrew clinically says, “Your number.”

Bewildered, Neil says, “What?”

“If I ever get sent on a mission to find you again, it would be helpful to actually be able to call you instead of having to roam the school for hours on end.”

Neil rolls his eyes, but relents. He takes Andrew’s phone, inputs his number, and places the device back on Andrew’s palm without any skin contact.  

Andrew saves the number as _blue-eyed ginger_ , pockets his phone, and takes a puff of his cigarette. “It’s different.”

“What is?”

“The number you gave me. It is not the same as the one in Wymack’s records.”

Neil seems taken aback at first, probably at the indication that Andrew had looked at his file, but then his expression shifts to something like deliberation.

“You…never mind.” He shakes his head a little, then explains, “The one he has isn’t my permanent number.”   

 _Huh_ , Andrew starts to think, then stops. It doesn’t mean anything, he tells himself.

Neil moves a little, letting his legs dangle over the edge, fingers tapping his thighs.

“I’m guessing that Wymack’s mad about the way I reacted.” He tries to give off an air of nonchalance, but the undercurrent of anxiety is detectable.

Tapping the ash off his cigarette, Andrew asks, “Why are you afraid of him?”

“I’m not,” Neil denies, more of a defensive reflex than anything, because after that he rectifies it with, “Well, not really.” He gnaws on his bottom lip, and Andrew’s eyes are drawn to the motion. “I just don’t trust men who are around that age.”

Men who are just old enough to be his father, Andrew thinks. He doesn’t voice it out though, and instead says, “I suppose that would explain why you knocked Gordon out.”

Neil’s expression darkens, a reef of storm clouds. “Fathers who beat their children are scum. I should’ve just killed him.”

Andrew looks away from Neil. Finishes his cigarette. Tosses the butt over the roof. Thinks of the last time he saved someone from parental abuse.

“Such passion,” he says, blasé. “You know that Seth will not be grateful.”

“I’m well aware of that. The kid’s an absolute _asshole_ ,” Neil says, face contorted in detestation. “He throws around slurs and doesn’t listen to any of the teachers, and he starts fights wherever he goes.” He pauses. “But in the end, he’s just a kid.”  

“The world isn’t going to treat someone kinder just because they are underage.”

“It isn’t,” Neil agrees, “but the people in it should.”

“Human beings are created in order to torment one another,” Andrew recites monotonously.

Neil whips his head towards Andrew. “Dostoyevsky wrote that.”

“He did.”

Neil nods, looking out into the parking lot and the soccer field.

They’re both silent after that, the minutes passing by at a slumbering pace. Andrew thinks the sky has never been that blue before.

Neil sighs. “Guess it’s time to face the music. I can’t hide up here forever.”

Andrew, without looking at him, says, “Wymack is all bark and no bite.”

“I think I’ve noticed that.” Neil runs a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face briefly. “Knowing him, his idea of punishment is probably something like making me go to that pumpkin carving thing this Sunday and forcing me to socialize.”

That certainly sounds like Wymack.

“And will you go?”

“I know _you_ won’t,” Neil says wryly. Tilting his head to the side, he asks, “Why does the principal let you get away with skipping a bunch of stuff anyway? The daily meetings, for one.”

“He and I have our own set of agreements,” Andrew responds, a parsed down answer.

“Do you hate your job?”

“I do not care about it enough to hate it.”

Neil hums. “You should join us, this Sunday. I know that Nicky has been really excited about it. And it’s a family event, so you should go together.”

“He can go on his own.”

“You’d let him? From what he’s told me, you’re usually pretty strict about letting him go out without supervision.”

Nicky really needs to learn how to keep his mouth shut and not overshare this sort of matter. And there is really no reason for him to disclose anything to Neil, unless he’s gotten chronically attached to him during all the times he’s spent with Neil during his advisory periods. It is going to be nothing but a giant headache for Andrew in the end – out of all the people to get close to, it just had to be the man who’s an undercover mobster.

“But he won’t be without supervision, will he?” he replies placidly.

“No, I guess he won’t, since most of the teachers will be there.” Neil shrugs. “Still, you should come. Alvarez told me that there’s going to be loads of candies and deserts. A sugar addict like you would love it.”

Andrew casts him a sidelong look, contemplative.   

“Come with us on Friday for dinner, then maybe I will consider it.”

A crease appears between Neil’s eyebrows. “Us?”

“Nicky, Kevin, and yours truly.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Yes, Neil. Do you not know the days of the week?”

Neil glares at him. “No need to be a douche about it. Besides, I don’t see why I should go out with you. I don’t even trust you.”

“Your paranoia is admirably persistent.”

“You almost broke my nose and then you broke into my house. It’d be stupid of me to _not_ be paranoid.” 

“Then you would be glad to know that the feeling is mutual.”

Neil scowls, a pretty expression on him. In the end, he says, “Fine.”

Quietly satisfied, Andrew turns away again. “I will pick you up at seven.”

*

When Andrew pulls outside of Neil’s apartment complex, Nicky turns the volume knob until the music is only a hushed buzz. He cranes his neck around, looking utterly confused. “Where are we?”

Andrew lets the engine run and doesn’t bother turning the hazard lights on.

Instead of answering Nicky’s question, he says, “Get in the back.”

“What, why?” Nicky twists around to look at Kevin. “What’s going on?”

“How should _I_ know?”

“There’s no harm in asking, sheesh. Andrew, come on, tell me, what are we –”

There’s a light knock against Nicky’s window, and he jumps in his seat. He makes a small gasp of pleasant surprise when he looks out, before opening the door and scrambling to get out, only to squawk when his seatbelt confines him in place. When he finally frees himself, he shouts, “Mr. Josten!”

From the rearview mirror, Andrew sees the massive frown on Kevin’s face. “What’s he doing here?”

“Well, Kevin, I live here,” Neil answers, bent down a little so his face comes into view from the open door, “and I believe that I’ll be crashing your party tonight.”

“Hop in, Mr. Josten. I’ll sit in the back,” Nicky says, sliding in behind the passenger seat.

Andrew peels off into traffic before Neil’s even sunk into his seat, much less buckle in his seatbelt.

“Eager for dinner or are you always such a responsible driver?”

“Afraid to die?” Andrew taunts dully.

“It’d be a shame if your car got wrecked.”

“Andrew would never let that happen,” Nicky butts in. “He never lets anyone drive his car, not even me, his own beloved cousin.”

“You failed your driving test,” Andrew states.

“Twice,” Kevin adds with emphasis.   

“Can you two stop embarrassing me in front of Mr. Josten?”

“I was only stating the facts,” Kevin says.

“Well _I_ was only –”

Andrew tunes their bickering out. He does, however, hear the quiet chuckle from beside him.

Kevin and Nicky are still arguing when they get to their destination. Standing by the car, Neil peers up at the bright letters trumpeting the restaurant’s name.

“Sushi Garden? Really?”

“Too provincial for your tastes?” Andrew says as he walks towards the entrance.

Nicky abandons his argument with Kevin to tell Neil, “We go here because the buffet is great. And their happy hour keeps Andrew happy. Happy-ish. Well, Andrew’s version of happy. Andrew’s happy-ish hour.”

“I think I get the joke now, Nicky,” Neil says, a droll smile on his face.

“We also go to Cheesecake Factory,” Kevin informs him while Andrew holds four fingers up to the host – Sydney – who raises a finely drawn eyebrow at the additional member to their party; they’ve been coming here regularly for the past year, always a table for three. 

Nicky grins widely, his braces in full view. “Yeah, we do! We alternate between there and this place. Andrew has a friend who works there, plus their cheesecakes and pastas are to die for.”

“Their food is less greasy and much healthier,” inserts Kevin.

“I hope you’ll join us again next week, Mr. Josten!”

At this, Neil cuts Andrew a furtive, loaded glance.

“I can’t promise you anything as of yet,” he tells Nicky, quite apologetically, very skillfully.

Nicky juts his lower lip out in an exaggerated pout.

When they’re seated, Nicky asks, “Did Andrew invite you out tonight?”

Neil’s lips stretch into a half-smile. “Sort of.”

“Oh, okay.” Nicky’s grin takes a little nervous turn, like he regrets asking that question somehow. Andrew doesn’t think too much of it. Their server brings them a glass of water each. Nicky and Kevin head to the buffet bars first, leaving Neil alone with Andrew.

“Does Kevin always spend his Friday nights with you two?”

“For the most part.”

“Why is that?”

Andrew drums his fingers against the table, staring at Neil.

“Why don’t we play a little game?”

Neil narrows his eyes. “A game,” he repeats.

“A very simple one. For every question you ask, I will ask one as well. I will answer with the truth, and so will you.”

“How can I be sure that you won’t lie?”

“You would simply have to take a leap of faith.”

Neil gives him an unimpressed look.

“Unlike you, I am not a liar.”

“I would hope not, since you’re lousy at it.”

This time, Andrew gives _him_ an unimpressed look.    

Eventually, Neil says, “Alright. I’ll play this game.”

Andrew gestures at him to take the first turn.

“Why does Kevin spend a lot of his time with the both of you?”

“If he doesn’t, he would be alone.”

Neil seems even more perplexed than he did before. “Wymack isn’t the type of father that’d let that happen.”

“No, I suppose he isn’t.”

“And Dan seems to be getting along fine with Kevin. Well, most of the time.”

“But they can’t always be with him, can they? Neither can his other friends.”

“So you’re saying that when there’s nobody else to accompany him, Kevin would be tagging along with you two.” Neil thinks this over by himself. “I guess this is what Nicky meant when he said that Kevin gets anxious when he’s left alone. Wymack’s essentially entrusted you with his son, then.”

Andrew waves this away. “With him around, Nicky’s attention will at least be shifted away from me.”

Besides, Andrew is quite sure that Kevin’s continuous endeavor of hanging out with the likes of his English Lit. teacher - and with one of the two boys at school who are openly gay - on the weekends and on certain weeknights is because he wants to show his father that he has a social circle outside of his academic decathlon team and the music group he meets up with once a week and that he can have fun on Friday nights like other teenagers do. Andrew is also of the opinion that Kevin hasn’t been very successful with it.

“I’ve always found it weird, though, how both Dan and Kevin don’t have Wymack’s name.”

“You’re the one who has done his research on the school and its citizens. Why don’t you share your knowledge with the class?”

Neil ignores the dig and says, “I know that Dan’s adopted, and that Wymack only found out that Kevin’s his son a year ago. Kevin used to go to that fancy boarding school in the next district, and after his mother died, he went to Wymack.”

Andrew gazes at him intently then, waiting to see if Neil is going to mention the other fundamental component to Kevin’s story.

“I also heard that there had been some hazing going on and Kevin almost had his hand broken.”

Well, then. He’s certainly done some studious research. It makes Andrew wonder the extent to which he knows about Andrew’s history, if he had taken everything at face value and labeled Andrew the same way everybody else has.  

Psychotic. Volatile. _A monster_.

But tonight, Andrew is more interested in other matters.

“It seems to me that you know a great deal.”

“There is one thing, though, that I’m still not sure about,” Neil continues, eyes tracking Kevin and Nicky as they wait in line at the buffet, “and I felt that it wasn’t my place to ask about it.”

“The suspense is killing me,” Andrew remarks, dispassionate.

“Does Kevin have ASD?”

Andrew observes the way Neil asks the question, how he’s lacking his usual tactlessness. His expression is serious, not at all like he was asking just to scratch an inquisitive itch.

“I am surprised you noticed.”

Bee had been the first to pick up on it. She had him diagnosed after that but even now only a handful of people know, and very few notice it.

Shrugging, Neil says, “It was just a hunch I had, but I didn’t think it mattered if I ever got it confirmed or not. I’ll still treat him the same either way.”

Andrew supposes it’s good to know that Neil won’t be a jackass about it. Right on cue, the boys return to their table with plates overflowing with food.

“Man, the lines are so long!” Nicky complains. “You two should go right now before more people come.”

He’s whipping out his phone to take a photo of the food he’s piled onto his plate while Kevin is already ravenously chomping down on his.

“Oh, to be sixteen and have an insatiable appetite,” Neil says as they head over to the buffet.

Joining the queue, Andrew says, “I imagine you would eat a whole box of granola bars in one sitting if you had such a big appetite.”

“Very funny,” Neil says, lips curled.

“That’s me,” Andrew deadpans.

A few gazes skitter their way and cling onto Neil’s ruined left cheek. Andrew wonders if he notices the attention, if he is bothered by it. He guesses it’s a yes on the first, but a maybe on the second; he recalls with vivid clarity the self-deprecating way Neil reacted when Andrew had stared at the burn marks. Right now though, he seems unperturbed; he’s even flashing phony, razor-sharp grins at those who accidentally make eye-contact with him, forcing them to nervously look away.

“It is my turn to ask a question,” Andrew says, calling Neil’s attention back to their conversation.

“Ask away.”

Since Neil started with a pretty innocuous question, Andrew decides to throw a soft ball too.

“Where did you learn how to fight?”

“Here and there,” Neil answers cryptically.

“You are going to have to be more specific than that.”

“Well, I properly began learning how to box when I was about seventeen,” Neil says, tucking a tress of hair behind an ear. Andrew’s gaze zeroes in on his pierced helix, but he finds no earring there.

“Before that, I was…” he trails off for a while, gaze distant. He gives a tiny shake of his head, pupils thin and focused again. “Before that, I only knew a few self-defense moves. And…well, I was also trained to fight using knives.”

“Who taught you how to use a gun?”

A beat of hesitance precedes Neil’s answer. “My mother did.”

He probably comes from a crime family, Andrew guesses.

“Do you carry around knives with you?” Andrew asks, sounding wholly disinterested despite feeling quite the opposite.

Neil meets Andrew’s eyes, all chilly composure.

“Occasionally,” he says. “When guns aren’t a viable option. I only use knives when I have no other choice.”

“There is always a choice,” Andrew says.

Neil averts his gaze, a touch of forlorn uncertainty in his features. “I wonder.”

A little more quietly, Andrew asks, “And who taught you how to use knives?”

Neil’s lips wobble, and for a moment it looks as if he is going to cry, but then Andrew realizes that he is only trying to suppress a smile. When he looks at Andrew again, his mouth is hooked around a ferocious grin.  

“People who are now dead,” he answers.

A chill bullets down Andrew’s spine, but his chest is burning with an inferno of interest.

They finally get to buffet and Neil passes Andrew a clean plate. “Any other questions, comments, or concerns?”

“None for now,” Andrew says, detached as he douses all of his emotions with water.

Neil scans the display of food. “What about you, though? I heard you and Renee spar together regularly.”

“I learned how to fight because I had to,” Andrew says matter-of-factly.

“Isn’t that the reason we all learn how to fight?” Neil muses, rather derisively. “All that jazz about how we either bite back or perish, and how we’re alone against the world?”

“We’re born alone, we live alone, and we die alone,” Andrew intones in a rare bout of agreeability.

Neil turns towards him, a shrewd gleam in his eyes.

“But you weren’t born alone, were you?”

Andrew isn’t surprised in the least that Neil knows about the existence of his twin. It’s an open secret more than anything, and with the unending circulation of gossip and the ambit of research Neil’s done, it would be more astounding if he _doesn’t_ know about it.

But that is a can of worms that Andrew refuses to open – at least, not now or in the near future – and if Neil’s intel is any good and Nicky has been running his mouth, he should know that this subject is too complex and onerous to be talked about over an all-you-can-eat dinner buffet at a chain restaurant.

He lets Neil take his silence any way he wants. Still, a part of him is clandestinely grateful at the way Neil backs off at his obvious refusal to answer. He only looks at Andrew for a beat longer, then turns away.    

Andrew loads half his plate with Californian rolls and the other half with jellos and blueberry tarts, while Neil mostly lades his with pieces of fruits and a few shrimp tempura. They both survey each other’s plate and mutely agree to not speak of the other’s choices as they head back to their table.

Kevin’s grimace announces his disapproval of their unbalanced meal. Nicky simply winces. The thing that Andrew appreciates about the restaurant’s sushi rolls is that they’re small enough for him to put into his mouth in one go. It saves him the trouble of having to tear his food into tiny pieces.

He usually washes his dinner down with a bottle of beer when they’re at Sushi Garden, the amount paltry enough to keep him fully sober and drive them all home, but tonight he refrains.

Like magnets, his eyes follow Neil’s hands throughout the meal, how they expertly operate a pair of chopsticks, how they brush back his bangs, how they lie on the table across Andrew’s.

“I haven’t seen you at the store.”

Neil blinks at him in surprise.

Nicky and Kevin have not returned from their fourth trip to the buffet. Their server whizzes past them to wait another table. A child wails from the booth beside them. Two men holler in triumph as they watch a football game on the television set at the bar.   

Andrew fixes his gaze on the crumbs left on his plate.

“The first two times,” he clarifies monotonously, keeping his hands in his lap where Neil can’t see them trembling just the slightest, “I had seen you at the store on Thursday evenings. But not anymore.”

“Oh.” Neil runs a finger over the condensation at the side of his glass of water. “I’ve been going on weekends instead of on a weeknight. I stay back at school until pretty late, so.”

“For a fake teacher, you are quite dedicated.”

“Maybe you’re the one who’s not dedicated enough.”

“I never claimed to be.”

The look Neil sends him then carries a different weight, strange, disquieting. It reels Andrew in, and he feels that if he isn’t careful, he would be swept away by the blue torrent of Neil’s eyes.  

“Why do you mention it, though?”

When Andrew doesn’t respond, he tries going for a barbed joke, “Isn’t it already bad enough that you see my unenjoyable face everyday at school?”

It’s an unsubtle jibe about what Andrew said the first time they met, but Andrew is not in the mood for banter, so he stays silent, nails digging into the meat of his palms.

Casually, Neil asks, “Will I be joining you for next week’s Friday night out?”

Unfathomably, the corner of Andrew’s lips twitches, and he smothers the odd impulse.

Casually, he says, “Do whatever you want.”

Neil smiles at him, a small, private smile that Andrew has never seen on him before.

Andrew fixes his gaze back on his plate, flexes his fingers. The tremor in his hands returns.

*

Neil is already there by the time Andrew and Nicky arrive to the fall-fest-type-thing. He acknowledges Andrew’s presence with a simple glance, and goes back to drawing a design on his pumpkin. They’re all in the courtyard, scattered around in groups at the tables, and the wind nips at Andrew’s ears. He detests the colder seasons.

Some of the students have brought their parents with them, a phenomenon that is rather miraculous since most of them have less-than-stellar parents and guardians, and the rest don’t actually _have_ parents. Andrew watches as Wymack helps Kevin cut the lid off of his orange monstrosity, how they both have their dark eyebrows knitted together in concentration.

There are a few huge crates filled with pumpkins on one side, with Hernandez, football coach and ethical ethics teacher, sitting near them on a folded chair with Sutherland, calculus instructor and renowned balls breaker. A variety of food are also laid out on the table in front of them – Andrew surmises they’re on guard duty – with Knox and a few students straggling nearby.

Nicky goes to one of the tables where his theater friends are, his exuberance level skyrocketing after he found out that Andrew was coming along that day. Andrew finds himself gravitating towards Neil’s table, where he’s wedged between Miura and Moreau. The three of them look absurdly intense, determined as they disembowel their pumpkins. Altherr is sitting adjacent to them on her wheelchair, cradling a cup of hot chocolate with a smile on her lips. Andrew sinks down on the vacant bench across the men.

All of them, minus Neil, glance up at him, then away, then jerk their heads back towards him again in a double-take.

Wisely, they keep their mouths shut. Neil, predictably, doesn’t. Without looking up, he says, “Not in the mood for slashing up pumpkins today?”

“No vegetable should ever be allowed to be that huge,” Andrew replies.

“I think pumpkins are fruits, though,” Neil quips, scraping out the seeds and pulps and plunking them into a big kitchen bowl at the center of the table.

“As a science teacher, I can vouch for that,” Dermott chips in from out of nowhere. She’s in a bright orange sweater that has the face of a devilish-looking jack-o-lantern on the front, her headscarf a matching garish color.

“Babe, what does biology have anything to do with the classification of gourds?”

Alvarez is dressed up as a Greek warrior, with a tunic, pleated leather skirt, a helmet, a spear, and a few pieces of armor.

Allison Reynolds, volunteer coach for the women’s soccer team and heir to the Reynolds empire, struts up towards the table, six-inch heels clacking against the pavement.

Neil turns so he’s straddling the bench, Moreau scooting away a little to make room for him, and Reynolds squeals a warm, “Neil!”

She extends her arms towards him, waggling her manicured fingers, and he nods, apparently a way of letting her know that it’s okay to envelope him in a hug, because that’s the next thing she does. It should be awkward since he’s still sitting and Reynolds is towering over him, but neither of them seem bothered by it. Andrew watches all this with indifference, but his insides are tangled up with something more than just curiosity.

“Oh kitten, I’ve missed you,” Reynolds says when she lets go of him. “You’re always hidden away when I’m at the school. You better not be turning into a workaholic.”

“Too late for that, I think,” Neil says dryly.

Reynolds clicks her tongue. “Bullshit. At least you’re here toda –” she abruptly stops speaking, eyes widening at the sight of Andrew, who is resolutely ignoring her.

The polished nail on her index finger sparkles like ruby under the sunlight as she points at him. “Is that Andrew Minyard or am I seeing his doppelganger?”

“Allison,” Renee chides softly, coming up beside her.

“I’m just asking. It’s weird to see him here. He never comes to any of these things.”

“Did the four of you come together?” Altherr asks, cordially forcing the conversation to a different topic. 

“We did,” Renee answers with a smile, jumping in to steer them away from dangerous waters. “We were all at my place to prepare a few dishes for today’s event and Allison drove us here afterwards.”

“You know you’re living the good life when Allison Reynolds, the most eligible bachelorette in the east coast, offers you a ride in her Porsche,” Alvarez says, nodding sagely.

“Ah yes, nothing beats a ride in her convertible. The sun in my eyes, the wind in my hijab – how could I ask for more?” Dermott adds, bobbing her head along with Alvarez.

“You two are such bitches,” Reynolds says, voice laced with affection.

“Alvarez,” Moreau says, frowning, “why are you wearing that? Halloween isn’t until tomorrow.”

She sighs, dramatic. “It’s always Halloween in my heart.”

“No worries, Jean. She has an entirely different costume for tomorrow,” Dermott drawls.

“But it’ll be a Monday,” Neil interjects, an eyebrow lifted.

Miura contributes to the discussion with, “You’re new, so you might not know this, but Alvarez here is the queen of dressing up.”

“Oh, right,” Alvarez says, smacking a fist on her palm, “Jean didn’t transfer here until November so he missed out on all the fun stuff we did last Halloween.”

“What’s this? Are we talking about Halloween costumes?” Knox, a sunny smile on his face, makes an appearance, bearing a tray of hot drinks. “Oops, I didn’t get enough drinks. I didn’t realize we had this many people.”

“It’s fine,” Renee assures, “we’ll be sitting at a different table anyway.”

“In conclusion,” Alvarez proclaims, “I expect everybody to go all out tomorrow. No half-assing the sacred Halloween tradition of dressing up.”

“It’s rather childish, don’t you think?” Moreau says, pumpkin filling sticking to his fingers. Dermott shoots him a pointed stare.

“Come on, it’ll be fun!” Knox insists. “Betsy and the veep hand out candies to those who show up in a costume.”

“It’s not just for the students?” Neil asks.

“It’s for everyone,” Altherr says, “staff members included.”

Neil’s gaze unerringly finds Andrew’s amidst the bustle, a tiny smirk on his lips. Andrew stares back, apathetic.

“Uh-oh,” Miura says in a low voice, a side-long look directed towards the other end of the courtyard, “look who’s here.”

They collectively veer their attention towards a curvy woman with straw blonde hair, her lipstick a luminescent red.

“Who’s she?” Neil asks. His eyes are on the woman, while his hand is toying with the knife he’ll be using to carve his pumpkin. The blade rolls smoothly over his supple fingers like the crest and trough of waves.

“Anderson,” Alvarez replies, acid in her tone.

“Tal’s mom?”

“The one and only,” Dermott mutters.

“A southern belle, if I’ve ever seen one,” Altherr says.

“More like a southern bitch if you asked me,” Reynolds comments loftily.

“Now now, there’s no need for that,” Knox says, but his smile is gone, his lips pressed into a displeased line as he watches Mrs. Anderson.

Alvarez snorts. “Oh, Jeremy. I think there is every need for that.”

Neil tips his head to the side. “Tell me.”

“Where do I even begin?” Dermott sighs, a hand on her hip. “Two years ago she petitioned for my removal from the school. She failed of course. I still don’t know which offends her more: my religion or the fact that I teach biology _and_ sex ed.”

“Last year she kindly suggested that I retire,” Altherr says, making finger-quotes as she says ‘kindly’, “because my inability to use my legs obviously indicates my inability to work and teach.” Her husband holds her hand, mouth tugged downwards.

“She’s a good mother, though,” Renee says, ever the pacifist. “She moved her son here after some complications at his former school.”

“This year she’s been going after you though, hasn’t she?” Alvarez reminds her. “She wants you to revert back to your original hair color or something.” After making a noise of disparagement, she says, “Honestly, that woman drives me up the wall. She nitpicks on all these things like she doesn’t have anything better to do.”

“Hmm,” Neil says in response to all of it, knife dancing around his fingers.

“And now she’s making her way here,” Miura mumbles, ducking his head closer to Altherr’s.

“Ms. Walker,” Anderson trills, trotting her way towards Renee. The pungency of her perfume assaults Andrew’s nose even from where he’s sitting.

“I know this is a little untoward,” she starts, words embossed in a heavy Southern accent, “but I know just the right hair stylist who can fix that hair of yours in a jiffy.”

Reynolds looks like she’s ready to claw the woman’s eyes out.

Renee puts on a smile. “That’s very kind of you, but –”

“But nothing! Think of it as a –”

Everybody watches as she gets derailed, her attention snagged by the scars on Neil’s face. Andrew tenses. Thinly veiled repulsion follows the initial shock, her face warped into artificial civility.

“You must be new,” she says, sniffing haughtily as her condescending eyes sweep over Neil, “I’ve never seen you before.”     

“And you must be the lovely Mrs. Anderson. Tal’s told me all about you,” Neil says, words rounded in a Southern drawl, a charming smile on his face.

Everybody’s eyebrows either climb up to their hairlines or stoop down to their noses. Andrew’s doesn’t, but he blinks, twice.

Anderson gapes, her cheeks flushed.

“Well, I don’t know about being _lovely_ –”

“No need for modesty,” Neil says, his right hand extended. “Neil Josten. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Oh, yes, likewise,” she stutters, taking his hand. “Whereabouts are you from?”

Neil manages to make his smile more dazzling. Andrew is pretty sure he still has the knife in his pocket somewhere. “I’m from Nashville, ma’am.”

Gasping, Anderson hovers a hand over her chest. “You don’t say! I was born and raised in Brentwood, right outside of Nashville.”

Neil’s mouth falls open in pleasant surprise, an extremely convincing act. “That is such a wonderful coincidence.”

“Ain’t it? Why, I haven’t come across anyone from Tennessee in such a long time!”

“Me neither,” Neil tells her, “not since I moved here a couple of months ago. It makes this meeting even lovelier, doesn’t it, Mrs. Anderson?”

“No need for formalities - call me Patty!” she gushes, batting her eyelashes, before she raves on about the food she’s brought with her that day, _some fried pickles and biscuits and gravy that’s sure to remind you of home!_

Altherr, Dermott, and Alvarez have ceased to look astonished and are now trying their best to not bust out laughing. Knox and Miura still seem mystified, while Moreau has a hand clamped over his mouth as he looks away, grey eyes somber but shoulders shaking from constrained laughter. Reynolds appears weirdly smug, her arms folded over her chest as she leans against Renee, who darts Andrew an amused glance.

With Anderson distracted, the girls slink away to another table, snickering. Neil escorts her to where Bee and Abby are sitting on the other side of the courtyard, no doubt planning to dump her off to them next. He begins his retreat, but she continues to talk, placing a hand over his bicep and giving it a squeeze. His winning smile becomes a little strained.  

Before his mind has even fully processed what he’s witnessing, Andrew is already on his feet, arms rigid with tension, hands balled into fists. He only makes it a couple of steps though, because Neil finally escapes and is now turning on his heels, smile vanishing as he returns to where Andrew is. Moreau and Knox are still there too, carving up their gourds and periodically glancing up to where Neil had been.

“Fuck,” Neil breathes out, back to his normal accent, scrubbing a hand over his face, “that drained my whole life energy out of me.”  

He plops down next to where Andrew had been sitting and takes a cup of tea from the tray Knox brought over earlier. He guzzles it down without a problem, not even complaining about how cold it’s gotten. Andrew’s limbs unlock, muscle by muscle.

“You’re not really from Nashville, are you?” Knox inquires.

“I’m not,” Neil answers lightly, as if the ruse he just pulled is not even a blip in his radar.

“What if she finds out?” Moreau asks, wiping his hands on some paper towels.

The carving knife makes its reappearance, and Neil stabs it into the pumpkin he had been working on earlier. “Then she’ll find out. It won’t matter to me.”

Moreau, true to fashion, frowns at Neil’s careless reaction. But then his face smooths out as he fiddles with his nearly finished jack-o-lantern. “Well, it _was_ rather entertaining just now.” 

Neil smirks. He says something in French then, something that has Moreau actually cracking up, and Knox nudges Moreau, playfully begging him to translate the joke.

Meeting Andrew’s eyes, Neil smiles his signature half-smile, this time genuine, and nothing like the contrived smiles he’s been throwing at Anderson. He looks from Andrew to the spot next to him, an unambiguous invitation. Andrew sits.  

Neil picks up where he left off, scooping out the remaining innards of his pumpkin.

In German, Andrew says, “I am surprised by your ability to exhibit some decorum.”

“Good,” Neil replies in the same language, “I’m glad I can keep you on your toes.”

“I hate surprises.”

“Of course you do,” Neil says, unsympathetic.

Why does he even bother talking to Neil.

“Why did you do it,” Andrew says, observing Neil as he extricates the knife he impaled onto his pumpkin and utilizes it for its actual purposes.

“Are you asking why I played nice instead of chewing her out and embarrassing her in public?”

“Your words, not mine.”

Neil saws through the shell of the pumpkin, painstakingly, expertly, cutting it along the lines of the design he drew. “Renee already said it,” he says, “she’s a good mother. A terrible human being, maybe, but a good mother.” He stops. Exhales. Looks up at the cluster of students a few tables away, Tal among them. The boy catches Neil’s gaze and gives a wave, grinning. Neil waves back.

Andrew hums. He holds his hand out, palm up. Neil stares at it for a while. Transfers him the knife. Rolls the pumpkin towards Andrew.

Andrew digs the blade into the skin of the pumpkin. It doesn’t bleed.

The silhouette of a rotund cat, its back arched and tail pointed upwards, looks back at him when he finishes.

“You are a sentimentalist,” he informs Neil.  

The corner of Neil’s eyes crinkle, wrapped around something like mirth.

“I think you are, too.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent way too much time writing this chapter,,,, anyway
> 
> can’t believe andrew scored neil’s number AND a date in one chapter but the question now is this: is it a date if you’re joined by two hungry teenage boys? vote yes or no now on your phones
> 
> let me know what you think of this story :') 
> 
> my [tumblr ](http://nakasomethingkun.tumblr.com)


	4. painted on the road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Birthdays are celebrated. Bets are placed. More secrets and truths are shared. When will they get their act together?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs: implied/referenced rape/non-con, minor discussions on sexuality, implied/referenced abuse and violence, mentions of death ideation 
> 
> please don't hesitate to let me know if there's anything else i need to add.
> 
> this fic is not beta'd and english isn't my first language, so feel free to correct me on any mistakes you see.
> 
> title of chapter is from lorde's "homemade dynamite"

On Monday, Neil shows up dressed as a pirate, an eye-patch over his left eye and a hook on his left hand. The candies he acquires from Bee, who is dressed up as a ladybug this year, and from Vice-principal Ortiz, who is dressed up as Alice from Alice in Wonderland, are dumped onto Andrew’s desk during lunch period, making a small hill when combined with all the chocolate bars that Andrew himself had obtained.

Neil removes his tricorn hat, his auburn hair more tousled than usual, observes the striped black-and-white jumpsuit Andrew is wearing, and asks, “Are you supposed to be a convict?”

Andrew shoots him a finger gun as confirmation. Neil then tells him how Phil – the man Andrew saw that night in Neil’s condominium – had scrounged up a costume for him the day before but was more than happy to do it even though it was so last minute.

“I don’t know why he was so excited. Probably because I’ve never dressed up for Halloween before.”

“It sounds like you have been living a rather sad life,” Andrew remarks without any emotion.

It’s meant to be one of his incisive jests, but Neil merely shrugs instead of hurtling a scathing remark of his own. “I suppose I have.”

On the previous day, after they had finished their jack-o-lantern, he and Neil had walked over to the parking lot for some semblance of privacy, leaning against the hood of the Maserati as they shared a cigarette stick and a few more secrets. Neil had regaled him with the tale of how he met Allison years ago, back when she had just graduated college and was on a holiday in France to treat herself. Neil had been in the country because had been sent on a few errands – a word choice that had Andrew quirking an eyebrow at him – and after their first meeting, Allison had been adamant to stay in touch. A few years after that, Neil had asked for her help with some family matters – a phrase that had Andrew looking at him skeptically again – and it was how Neil had ended up being in her debt. He was originally in the New York area for some other business, and when Allison had found out, she had asked him to be a sub for the school as a way for him to return the favor. When they initially met, Neil had informally been teaching Latin at a conservatory in Marseille, which was why Allison, rather whimsically, had decided that he can take up the gig. All Neil had to do was forge a few paperwork as proof that he’s a certified substitute teacher.

Afterwards, Andrew had told Neil about how he got his job; Bee had been his psychiatrist when he was in college, and when she left the medical center to work at the high school and help Wymack out, Andrew had just graduated and was in search of…something to do with his life. She suggested that he become a teacher, an idea that he derided in the beginning. Then he sat for the educator exams and applied for a teaching license. Firefield was perhaps the only school that would hire him, with its slightly more flexible regulations as a charter school and with Wymack making it his prerogative to hire troubled teachers and recruit even more troubled students.

On Friday, Renee presents him with a gift bag, right when he is about to climb the stairs to the roof of the main building where Neil would be. He rummages through the decorative tissue and pulls out a knitted scarf of a brilliant blue color.

“It suits your complexion,” Renee says, a kind but mischievous smile on her burgundy lips.

Andrew gives her a flat stare and tucks the scarf back inside the bag.

“Can it be machine-washed,” he asks, because he’s still keeping it, even if he hates the color.

On the same day in the afternoon, Bee hands him a present that’s enfolded neatly in yellow wrapping paper – it’s probably a book, because Bee has been giving him books every year since he was nineteen – and a travel mug filled with hot cocoa. He nods in thanks and she smiles at him, bright eyes and dimpled cheeks.

On the same day in the evening, a skittish Nicky gives him a package that’s sloppily swaddled in a purple wrapping paper.

“I know you told me not to get you anything and to save my money, but it doesn’t even cost that much, I promise,” Nicky insists, wringing his hands.

Andrew tears the paper open to reveal a black cable sweater.

He stares at Nicky, drapes the gift over the back of the couch, and reaches up to flick him on the forehead on his way to the front door. Nicky has grown to be much taller than he is.

“You are doing the laundry this Sunday,” Andrew says.

Nicky bounds up to him, grinning. “No problem!”   

On the same day, later in the evening, Neil climbs into his car and doesn’t hand him anything. Kevin didn’t either, when they picked him up earlier on, but he keeps glancing in Andrew’s direction, forehead creased and hands bunched into the pockets of his jacket.

At Cheesecake Factory, the host seats them at a booth, and Roland breezes up to their table to distribute the menus.

“My favorite customers,” he says by way of greeting. With a wink, he announces, “Drinks are on me tonight.”

“Roland!” Nicky chirps, “Haven’t seen you in a while! And does this mean you’re letting me drink some booze tonight?”

“Being promoted from bartender to assistant manager has been beneficial to my career but detrimental to my social habits, I’m afraid,” he laments, “and no, it doesn’t. Andrew here would skin me alive if I served you alcohol.”

Andrew doesn’t say anything to that. Roland grins anyway, probably at Nicky’s pout. “It’s just a few more years before you hit twenty-one, kiddo. And when that happens, I’ll buy you a few drinks, alright?”

He then spots Neil sitting beside Andrew, and his dark blue eyes glimmer with interest.

“Oh, hello. We haven’t met yet.”

“No, we haven’t,” Neil says, only slightly leery.

“I’m Roland. I used to work the bar over there.” He points his chin in the direction of the bar that’s near the entrance, now manned by two other people.

Neil nods, a minute dip of his chin.

“This is Mr. Josten,” Nicky swoops in, enthusiastic. “He teaches German and French at our school.”

“Very cool,” Roland comments. His eyes flicker between Neil and Andrew, evaluating, before his lips curve into a smarmy grin.  

“Andrew’s drinks are on the house tonight, but we’d be glad to cover yours as well.”

“He doesn’t drink,” Andrew states without even looking up, and Roland blinks at him.

“Oh. Alright, then.”

A female server comes to their table then to take orders for their drinks, and Roland leaves her to it, tinkling his fingers goodbye at them before he continues on his rounds.

“You didn’t have to answer for me,” Neil murmurs, flipping through the menu.

He really didn’t. Neil is perfectly capable of fighting his own battles, but something had roiled in his chest at the way Roland had looked at Neil just now. Andrew decides against saying anything to Neil, because he doesn’t even know what or why he felt that way.

These days, living in his own body has become difficult, but not in the way it used to be. It is not at all reminiscent of how bleak he once felt, numbness consuming him, how he was scraped raw and bleeding until he was nothing but an empty shell. And he’s still nothing, flesh sutured together over weary bones, but –

But.

He turns to the last section of his menu, squinting as he scans the exhaustive list of cheesecakes and buries those thoughts where the light can never reach. He hasn’t decided how many different flavors he wants to order.  

“Aren’t you getting any food?” the source of his maudlin introspection asks, this time in a normal conversational volume.

“I am,” Andrew answers, pretending that his eyes aren’t strained as he glues them to the menu.

“I meant something that won’t give you diabetes,” Neil says, turning from one page to the next.

Nicky’s face pulls into a small grimace. “Mr. Josten, Andrew doesn’t ever really order anything else aside from –”

“What would you suggest?” Andrew says, folding his menu close and slanting his bored gaze towards Neil.

Nicky’s jaw drops. Kevin whips his head up from where it was buried in the menu, looking at them like they’ve grown two heads each.

“Well, what do you like to eat? And what do you feel like eating right now? Aside from sweets, of course.”

Andrew takes his time thinking it through, his mind pulling up and discarding different permutations of desserts and carb-heavy meals until it actually lands on a proper meal, something he can and wants to eat.

When it’s time to order, he surprises the two boys by saying, “Steak. Well-done.”

After the server leaves with their orders, Nicky tells Andrew, “There’s gonna be steamed veggies with the steak. You realize that, don’t you?”

“Contrary to what you may believe, I have no actual aversion to vegetables.”

“You don’t?” Neil asks, tongue-in-cheek.

“Just because I rarely eat them does not mean I dislike them.”

“Hmm,” Neil says, “I don’t really like them, actually. I can eat them, but it’s just that I’ve never acquired a taste for them.”

“You prefer fruits,” Andrew says, not really a question.

“Yeah.”

“You are like a child.”

Neil scoffs. “Says the man who feasts on candies all the time.”

Andrew stares stonily at him, which is by now a default reaction to Neil’s smart mouth.

Nicky shares a long look with Kevin, their expressions falling somewhere between discombobulated and inquisitive. Andrew lets them stew over it.

When their food arrives, Andrew spends the first ten minutes sawing his steak into bite-sized morsels.

“Bone apple tea,” Kevin mumbles, and Nicky cackles until there are tears in his eyes, wheezing “Oh my god, Kevin!” between breaths.

Andrew manages to eat most of his food, and Kevin and Nicky split the leftovers between them. Neil’s appetite doesn’t seem to be big, judging from how much is left on his plate by the time dessert comes out. He doesn’t seem to be a huge fan of sweets either, because he doesn’t order any cake. It’s a fact that has been obvious for a while now anyway, with how easily he relegated all his Halloween candies to Andrew. 

Stabbing a chunk of his toasted marshmallow s'mores galore cheesecake with his fork and holding it out, he gives Neil an unaffected stare. 

“I don’t really eat sweets,” Neil says.

Andrew waves his fork in front of Neil’s face until Neil rolls his eyes and dips his head closer to wrap his mouth around the piece of cake. A spasm chokes through Andrew’s other hand from where it’s lying on his lap.

Neil scrunches his nose up.

 _Cute_ , Andrew’s mind supplies, involuntary. He smacks the thought away; that word is not even supposed exist in his vocabulary.

“Too sweet,” Neil gripes, reaching for his water.  

Andrew shrugs. “Your loss.”

“Can I try some of yours, too?” Nicky asks, halfway through his banana cream cheesecake.

“No,” Andrew answers plainly.

“Stingy,” Nicky mutters.

Andrew scarfs down his cake and whiskey cocktail, and while the others finish their food, he goes to the restroom.

On his way back to their booth, Roland intercepts him, which isn’t surprising in the least.

“So, who’s your new friend?” he asks, propping his back against the wall, arms crossed leisurely. They’re in the dimly-lit hallway towards the back of the restaurant, but Roland’s smirk is evident even in the dark.

“Nobody,” Andrew replies, hands jammed into the pockets of his black jeans.

Roland clearly doesn’t believe his answer. “Will we be seeing more of him?”

“Who knows.”

Roland chortles. “Right.”

Once upon a time, Andrew had found Roland attractive. He’s lean, all long legs and languid confidence, black hair shaved on one side and dark blue eyes perceptive. They used to hook up in the staff room somewhere in the back, Andrew getting him off and then sending him away to take care of himself. He never allowed Roland to touch him, and for the most part, Roland had listened. There were times when he hadn’t kept his hands to himself, but this hadn’t been the reason their no-string-attached affair ended.

The band around Roland’s ring finger glitters silver even under the muted lights. He’s still good-looking, but the tug of desire at the pit of Andrew’s belly at the sight of him has been snuffed out a long time ago. There is no trace of it left; the notion of having hooked up with Roland seems so foreign now, even juvenile.

“He’s quite the eye-candy,” Roland says, “I would love to see him again soon.”

“I will let your husband know you said that,” Andrew says neatly.

Roland laughs, then goes back to work. Andrew doesn’t laugh, then goes back to his table to find Nicky cooing at Neil’s phone.

“She’s so pretty!”

“Isn’t she?”

For a wild minute, Andrew thinks that Neil is showing pictures of a female significant other, but then Kevin says, “How did you get her to be so big?”

“She was already big when I first got her.”

“Who named her though? That person’s a genius!”

Neil’s lips form this quiet, mordant smile. “My cousin did.”

Nicky slaps a palm on the table, his other hand shooting up in the air. “Ooh, ooh, the next time you adopt a cat, let me name it! I’ll come up with something as equally magnificent as King Fluffkins.”

“You should give it a name that’s more dignified,” Kevin suggests.

“For once,” Andrew intones, dropping into his seat, “I agree with Kevin.”  

Nicky flaps a hand around like he’s dispelling these nonsensical suggestions. “You guys are spoilsports and I’m just gonna ignore that.”

Neil stows his phone away, and Andrew tells him, “You are a hopeless cat fanatic.”

“Takes one to know one,” Neil quips.

“Andrew, can I go to Macy’s for a bit?” Nicky asks, clasping his hands in front of him in a hopeful gesture. “I want to look for some Christmas stuff.”

“Nicky, it’s only November,” Kevin interjects.

Andrew’s automatic answer to Nicky’s request would be ‘no’, but he supposes that it wouldn’t hurt. The store is right next door anyway.

“The bill first,” he says, which is as good a permission as any, and Nicky beams.

“I took care of it,” Neil says.

Andrew looks at him, and he doesn’t stop the small pinch he feels cleaving between his eyebrows, probably the most facially expressive he’s been in a while.

“It’s not a big deal,” Neil adds, motioning for Andrew to slip out of the booth.

They leave it at that and exit the restaurant, Andrew toting a bag that has his second slice of cheesecake to bring home. Before Nicky nabs Kevin to go into Macy’s with him, Kevin passes Andrew a homemade bookmark, a dried leaf pressed and laminated against a piece of beige card stock paper.

“It’s not – ” Kevin starts awkwardly, frowning as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “It’s not much, but I made it myself.”

Andrew hums in reply. Nicky loops an arm around Kevin’s, smiling at Neil and Andrew over his shoulder as the two of them stride off to the department store.

Andrew twirls the bookmark between his fingers before slipping it inside his pocket as he and Neil amble aimlessly around the strip mall. Neil stops at a wooden bench that faces a clothing store and takes a sit. Andrew drops down next to him, his cake sitting between them, and stares at the cigarette stick that Neil is offering him; it’s usually the other way around.

“Is this a birthday present?” he asks dryly, plucking the stick from between Neil’s fingers and propping it between his lips.

“If you want it to be,” Neil says as Andrew lights up the stick.

Andrew inhales deeply, the cherry a blazing orange, and expels the smoke through his mouth.

“I didn’t know if you were the sort of person that cared for birthdays,” Neil continues.

“I’m not,” Andrew says.

“I figured. Nicky said that he would’ve asked the server to sing you the birthday song when she brought out your cake just now but you probably wouldn’t have appreciated it.”

“So is this supposed to be your excuse for not getting me anything?” Andrew says, just because he can.

“I bought you dinner, didn’t I?” Neil retorts, an eyebrow lifted.

The single huff of breath that Andrew releases is the closest thing he has to a laugh.

When he is about to say something else, his phone buzzes against his thigh. He pulls it out of his pocket, sees the sender, and puts it away. The weight of Neil’s stare on the side of his face is like an anvil. He probably saw what was on the screen.

“You’re not going to look at that?”

“Quite the nosy one, aren’t you?”

“He’s probably wishing you a happy birthday, you know. It’s in your best manners to return the gesture.”

“Oh, Neil,” Andrew says, “you are too heavy to be treading on ice this thin.”

“If you really didn’t care about him, you wouldn’t have kept his number, much less save it as ‘the doppelganger’.”

Andrew tosses his cigarette butt onto the pavement, smoking drifting into the air like thread from the still glowing cherry. The cold night air stings his skin.

“I do not care for people who do not keep their promises.”

Neil looks at him expectantly, a challenge smoldering behind his eyes, a hint of vindiction in them.   

Andrew grinds his teeth. It takes a while to unhinge his jaw; he takes his time to collect every ounce of detachment he has so that when he speaks next, his voice is completely remote.  

“He cannot even keep his word about never wanting to see me again for the rest of his life.”

Neil’s eyes liquify, abruptly gentle. Andrew hates it.

“So he’s changed his mind about it – so what? Nicky says he wants to get together for Thanksgiving. Won’t you consider it?”

Andrew’s fists clench and unclench from where they’re hidden in the pockets of his jacket.

“My good opinion once lost is lost forever,” he says, feigning utter indifference. His brother might have mellowed over the years and wishes to make reparations, but Andrew himself is not so easily swayed – but maybe this is just his pettiness speaking.

Neil gives him the leeway to escape the subject once again, because after a quiet moment, he switches gears and says, “Where’s that from, anyway? I feel like I’ve heard of it before, but I can’t really remember.”

Andrew is silently offended. “Have you not read Jane Austen before?”

“Not really.”

He reads Fyodor Dostoyevsky but not Austen. Unbelievable.

“I don’t even know why I am still speaking to you.”

Neil’s half-smile is sly, a little provocative. “Maybe it’s because you find me irresistible.”

Andrew’s heartrate accelerates, his chest pumping; it feels like he’s standing on stage under the swath of a glaring spotlight, like a specimen scrutinized under the lens of a microscope.

But Neil was only joking, clear from the ironic way he said it.

“How about this,” he says now, “why don’t you let me know if there’s anything you want as a present? Since I obviously have to redeem myself for offending your delicate literature sensibilities.”

Andrew’s heart returns to its baseline rhythm and he ignores the clamminess of his palms.

Collectedly, he says, “A truth.”

Neil frowns a little. “But you could’ve just asked me for one as part of our game.”

But that’s not what Andrew wants. He wants something that Neil would be willing to give without having Andrew ask for it, something that he wants to share with Andrew simply because he wants to. Andrew doesn’t know when he’s gotten so greedy; he, of all people, should know that everything comes with a price, and wanting Neil to give a part of himself to Andrew for free is unfair and despicable of him.

“You don’t have to, if you do not want to,” he says, because he isn’t like them, and he won’t be like them.

Neil’s expression is serious, but not heavy. He looks a bit distant, like he’s sifting through his thoughts and properly considering Andrew’s words. 

Each second that passes by without Neil saying anything has Andrew digging his nails deeper and deeper into his palms. It would be better if Neil just says outright that he doesn’t want to spare Andrew a truth without any remuneration.

“Abram,” Neil says, meeting Andrew’s eyes.

Andrew watches Neil weave and unweave his fingers together like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. Then he pulls them apart and settles them against his lap, a tiny furrow appearing between his brows before leaving. 

“It’s the name that my mother gave me – my middle name.”

Andrew waits to see if he has more to say. Then he asks, “So is Neil Josten not your real name?” It wouldn’t surprise him if it weren’t.

“It is,” Neil says, which is probably more surprising. “It’s been my real name for the past few years.”

“And the name you were born with?”

“Abram is the only name that matters,” Neil says, fierce. Then he rears back, brings his hands together again, fiddling his thumbs as he drops his gaze to the pavement.

Andrew’s mouth tastes bitter. He says, “You didn’t have to tell me, if it makes you so uncomfortable.” He’s trying to make his voice sound even, but the words still came out as if he has gravel in his throat. The thought that he has forced Neil to do something against his will makes him sick.

“It’s not like that,” Neil argues, looking at Andrew again. His eyes are an electric blue. “It’s something that I’ve chosen to let you know, and I don’t regret it. I just –”

He bites one corner of his lips, chewing on it. Andrew realizes it’s something that he does when he’s thinking, unsure of something.

“I’ve never told anyone before,” Neil says, almost a whisper, a portion of his walls crumbling down.

Something in Andrew stirs, and he has never felt so aware of the existence of his heart until this very moment; it beats steadily in his chest, as sure as the dawn that comes after a long night.

Abram. A truth.

A gift. 

His gaze still holds Neil’s. He shifts, closer, ocean tides lapping higher, trying to grasp the moon.

“Neil Abram Josten,” he says, testing the words on his tongue, how it feels like he’s creating something whole.

“Yeah,” Neil says, a little nonsensical, a little relieved; he probably trusts that Andrew would not use this disclosure against him or mock him in any way. His eyes have gone soft again, like the caress of spring.

Andrew thinks, _how stupid_ , but he isn’t sure if he’s thinking about Neil or himself.

*

“You seem to be in high spirits today,” Renee comments, retying her hair into a short ponytail after she carries the weights back to their place on the rack behind them.

Andrew doesn’t think he’s ever been called high-spirited before. His armbands are drenched in sweat. He sits up on the bench, yanks the collar of his shirt high enough to wipe the sweat dripping off his nose, and tells her, “You are imagining it.”

She smiles, and he takes in controlled breaths through his nose, the fire in his arms disintegrating into a simmering numbness. They will ache tomorrow from the amount of bench-pressing he’s done this morning. So he might have gone a little overboard – that does not mean he is in _high-spirits_.

Renee, on the other hand, seems unruffled by all the lifting she did before she spotted Andrew. She sits beside him and holds her cross pendant between two fingers, and this is how Andrew knows she’s about to say something bothersome.

“We have a few new bets on the table,” she says. Andrew doesn’t react to this, staring absently at the far wall.

“One of them concerns Neil’s sexuality.”

Well, then.

“And what do you hope to gain by telling me this?”

It’s a superfluous question; she probably hopes to glean some knowledge that could give her the upper hand. He’s helped Renee win a couple of bets in the past, where the profits were split between the two of them. Andrew himself rarely participates in these asinine bets. Usually she doesn’t need him to be in cahoots with her though, because she’s as good as Reynolds is when it comes to making wagers. Renee may be humanity’s last hope, but she is also a predator in a kill-or-be-killed world.

 

“The others have clashing opinions on this,” Renee says.

This is not surprising. Andrew imagines the situation is laid out to be something like this: Alvarez, who is very proud of her sexuality, is probably convinced that Neil bats for their team; i.e., he is gay. Somebody else, probably Miura, would vouch for Neil’s straightness, because of how suave he can be around women. Dermott would argue that that doesn’t amount to much, because – as she likes to remind everyone – there exists various other sexual orientations.

If Andrew had to place a bet, he would bet on how everybody would get it wrong – these are the same people who thought that he and Renee had something romantic transpiring between them. Reynolds had raked in a load of money on that one.

Andrew is getting incurably bored of this conversation though, so he cuts to the chase. “What did you place your money on.”

“I don’t think he is like you,” Renee says carefully, “but I –”

“You don’t think he fucks men, you mean,” he interrupts, close to a sneer. See, the hilarious thing is, Andrew himself has never actually fucked other men – fooled around with them, sure, but it is strictly always under his own terms where he is fully in control, and he’s never engaged in penetrative sex before, none that was ever consensual on his part, and never as an adult. He’s had more than a decade to recover, and he _has_ made some recovery – _he has, he has, he has_ – and he’s made progress that he never thought he could, but he doesn’t think that he’ll ever be able to trust someone enough to have them in his bed or him in theirs. Funny how trauma does that to a person.

Renee’s frown speaks volumes. “I meant that I don’t think it is as clear cut as the others make it to be.”

“Is that so,” he says, acerbic, revealing more than he intended.

The other hilarious thing is that Andrew has secretly wondered about this too. With the amount of time he spends talking to Neil and thinking about him, it is bound to come across his mind. But his deductions and musings never go too far; Neil is already dangerous enough as it is, and Andrew doesn’t need anything else to add onto the spectacle of Neil’s distracting existence. And the last thing he needs is to be given _hope_.

“Andrew,” Renee says. Her voice is kind – it always has been, and she is one of the few people in his life who utters his name without any hostility or fear in it. But this time, Andrew doesn’t want to hear it – he doesn’t want to discuss this matter any further, because he knows that Renee _knows_.

“Don’t,” Andrew says.

Renee doesn’t, but he doubts that this is the last time he’ll have to talk about it.

*

The morning meeting has already begun when Andrew strides into the conference room on Monday. Wymack gives him a stern look but continues his tirade on the stuff that are happening this week for Spirit Week and for homecoming. Andrew does not care for these meetings nor is he interested in the school events, but the small half-smiles Neil sends his way each morning are – not bad.

Today, he gets a seat that’s right across from Neil’s. While Ortiz brings up an issue with the logistics of the homecoming dance, Andrew slides his phone out to send a text.

_how long until wymack takes off his tie_

Seconds later, Neil looks down at his hands, away from the eyes of everybody at the table, and the scars on his cheek jounce and twist as he fights the urge to smile. He glances up at Andrew, then looks back down at his lap.

Andrew’s phone vibrates with an incoming text. He swipes it open with a thumb to read _probably as long as it’ll take for him to push his sleeves up_. The follow-up comes in a second later. _I think he’s just really proud of his tattoos_.

 _in 5 mins_ , Andrew types, _he will roll his sleeves up_

 _I’d say in 3_ , Neil replies.

A little over three minutes later, Wymack places his pen on the table, wrenches his tie loose, and bunches his sleeves up to his elbows to expose his tribal flame tattoos. Neil sends Andrew a triumphant smirk, and Andrew reciprocates with a flat look.

“Josten,” Wymack says, and Neil’s expression morphs into stout attentiveness.

“Yes?”

Wymack gives him the stink-eye like he knows Neil hasn’t been paying attention at all, but then he just asks Neil about how he’s adjusting to being the advisor for the drama club.

Andrew raises an eyebrow in question when Neil looks at him again, and Neil only shrugs.

When they all disperse after the meeting, Andrew sidles up to Neil as he walks down the corridors.  

“The drama club,” Andrew says.

“I sort of took over Renee’s position last week,” Neil explains, a folder cradled in his arm. “She has the nature club and the home economics club to supervise, and then she’s swamped with the homecoming thing this week, so I thought I could help her out a bit by taking over the drama club.”

They walk by students who are milling about the hallways, waiting for the bell to ring, with a few greeting Neil good morning and some glancing timidly at Andrew.

Dispassionately, Andrew says to Neil, “You don’t even like her.”

Neil skids to a stop, and Andrew turns back around so they’re face-to-face.

“I never said that,” Neil says, lips pursed in a telltale sign of discontentment. It’s not quite a scowl, but it’s still a pretty look on him.

“You did not have to,” Andrew tells him. “Anyone with a pair of eyes can see it.”

“I don’t dislike her,” Neil persists. “I just – ” He huffs, frustrated. “I’ve seen her records, and I know what she’s capable of. I just feel a bit nervous sometimes, when I’m around her. I don’t hate her or anything like that.”

A giant furry blob of orange zips past them. They both blink, and turn to where Rocky Foxy, the school’s mascot, is being wheeled down the hall on a decorated dolly while the other students cheer him on.

“Welcome to Spirit Week,” Andrew deadpans without any spirit.

“You know,” Neil says, head canted to the side, “I never found out the difference between the homecoming dance and prom. Are they the same thing?”

Andrew stares at him, appraising. “You did not go to school here.”

“I did, for a while. I went to school in Europe and Canada, then came back here, then finished high school in England.”

There’s probably a whole behemoth of a story behind that, but for now, Andrew says, “They are not the same thing. The dance this Saturday is for all the students.”

“And prom is for…?”

“The seniors.”

“Oh, okay. And prom is in spring, right? And I’ve heard that it’s more formal or something.”

Andrew nods.

“Will you go? To the homecoming game this Friday, and to the dance?”

Neil’s lips are pressed together to stave off a shit-eating grin, Andrew’s sure.

“I don’t know, Neil. Will you?”

“Depends. A guy I know might be bringing me out for dinner instead.”

“That is unfortunate for the guy.”

Neil’s face finally breaks into a grin. “Let’s go to the game this Friday. I’ve never been to one.”

Andrew hates going to any sports events. The noise, the crowd, the bright lights – they all grate on his nerves.

He doesn’t believe in regret, but he’s probably going to sorely regret this one. “I will go, but only until half-time.”

Somehow, Neil’s grin grows annoyingly brighter. He has very straight teeth. “A few of the teachers will be on duty during the dance on Saturday with the homecoming committee. I know Wymack didn’t assign you anything, but I was hoping you’ll go to the dance regardless, maybe as a chaperone.”

There goes his Saturday night plans of binge-reading Edgar Allan Poe, Andrew thinks. He supposes it’s not too much of a hassle, since he’ll be driving Nicky to school for the dance anyway.

“You need to work on your persuasion skills,” he tells Neil.

Neil bites his lower lip like he’s containing his delight, smile a river wide. “I don’t think I have to.”

No, Andrew thinks he doesn’t have to either.

*

When Andrew arrives to the game with Nicky, the home team has already scored a touchdown. Neil has saved them seats up in the bleachers, smiling wryly at Andrew after he spots them and beckons them over.

“I thought you’d be more punctual than this.”

Andrew flicks his fingers in dismissal. At least he made it.

Kevin might be here too, but if he is, he’d be with Dan somewhere towards the front. He had decided he would tag along with her after Nicky told him they wouldn’t be going out for dinner that night. Andrew is pretty sure the only reason they’re both here at the game is because Matt, who is Dan’s boyfriend, is on the starting line.

“I’m surprised we have our own football field,” Neil says over the crowd’s shouts of support and the announcer’s rowdy play-by-play, “since we’re a pretty small school.”

Andrew tells himself that the only reason he’s leaning in closer to Neil’s ear is so that he can hear him speak. “The money used to build it came wholly from donations.”

“Wow,” Neil remarks, “that’s pretty amazing.”

Andrew doesn’t think so, but he’s probably the only one whose opinion differs. Through the charity of others, they’ve gotten a few useful and impressive things – the mahogany table in the conference room and most of the library books, for example – but they get a lot of junk too, like the ratty couch in the teacher’s lounge that nobody sits on.

Overall, the night isn’t – awful. Someone drops their popcorn over Andrew’s shoes, but their team leads with a score of 21 to 7 by half-time, the air isn’t too frigid, and Neil buys Nicky and him some cotton candy. 

The next night tells a slightly different story. Nicky is in a despondent mood because the boy he likes – the one he’s been seeing during his shifts – can’t be his date for the dance due to conflicting schedules. He’s been sulking all week about having to dance with only his friends – even the football game didn’t cheer him up much. But he perks up when he realizes that Andrew is staying for the dance and not just dropping him off like he did last year.  

Streamers have been put up in every nook and cranny of the school since the beginning of the week, but someone probably thought it was a grand idea to add some more for tonight, because even the floor is teeming with them. They’ll be joined by an obscene amount of balloons too later on, when they announce the homecoming king and queen. If Andrew were capable of feeling sorry for anybody, he would probably feel sorry for the janitors and the clean-up committee. As it is, he steps over the colorful strings of crepe paper and further into the gym, where the lights are dimmed and the music is pounding.

He doesn’t actually _hate_ this sort of atmosphere – he used to frequent a night club on a weekly basis back in college after all, but that had been incentivized by the alcohol. Now though, he’s surrounded by a throng of high school kids who _wished_ they could get their hands on some booze. The authoritarian stance that Sutherland has taken by the punch bowl tells him that no drinks will be spiked tonight, though.

Andrew’s dressed in something that looks a lot like what he wears daily when he goes to work; there’s no reason to dress up when he _is_ , technically speaking, here for work. He did, however, slip on his best dress shoes and his satin tie before they left the house, and he’s glad he did, because Neil is in one of his expensive-looking suits, sans a tie and with the jacket undone to aim for a more casual look. At least his hair is in its usual red mess.

He’s chatting with Dermott in one corner of the gym, and as Andrew is approaching them, Alvarez comes into the picture to cajole Dermott into dancing with her. Andrew hears something about _just one dance before we have to make our rounds at the parking lot!_ Dermott indulges her, letting herself be pulled onto the dance floor as the music changes to a synth-pop song. And _oh, will you look at that_ – Kevin is one of the DJs, the other being Theodora Muldani, a fellow overachiever.   

“Hey.”

Andrew directs his gaze to Neil, and there is where it stays.

“Nice tie,” Neil says, lips quirked in a teasing half-smile, because Andrew doesn’t normally wear one. He’s come up in front of Andrew now, blue eyes stark even under the bright, colorful lights of the disco party bulb at the center of the gym.  “So, this is what homecoming is like, huh? Can’t say I’m disappointed.”

“That is because you had set a low bar.”

Neil lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “If that’s what it takes to keep the disappointments at bay, then so be it.”

“Mr. Josten,” Ortiz suddenly chimes in, “Ms. Sutherland and I are going to check the bathrooms, just to make sure no one is doing anything irresponsible in there. Can you stand guard by the foods and drinks while we’re gone?”

Neil obliges. Andrew shadows him to the table where the food is set up and fills a plastic cup with punch for himself.

“Wish you had something stronger?” Neil asks wryly.

Andrew hurls the now-empty cup at him, and it bounces off his chest and plunks to the floor, rolling back towards Andrew’s feet.

Neil tuts, making a face of deprecation. “Don’t litter.”

Andrew gives him his habitual look of apathy.

A few students come up to Neil to ask if they could take pictures with him, giggling as they tell him he should dance with them too. Neil handles it all with good grace, like the model fake teacher he is.

After the kids flit away and they’re left alone again, Andrew says, “Ask me something.”

“Time for another round in our game?”

Andrew doesn’t answer since it is already obvious.

Neil’s eyes wander out to the mass of dancing teenagers as he considers his question.

“Why did you take Nicky in?” he asks, looking at Andrew again. “He said that he could’ve applied to become an emancipated minor when his parents disowned him, but you decided to look after him, even after your brother said he could become Nicky’s guardian if you didn’t want to take the responsibility.”

“It is not out of the goodness of my heart, if that is what you’re thinking.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Nicky needed someone to look after him – that is all there is to it.”

“And you needed someone to look after, is that it? Did you think that having him around would somehow motivate you to wake up every morning, at least until he graduates?”  

Andrew meets the cool blue flames of Neil’s eyes head on, but he doesn’t come up with an argument to dispute Neil’s words. He is a terrible liar, after all. It is also partly his own fault; he had given Neil the ammunition back when he said _It’s a nice and slow way to kill yourself, is it not?_ when asked about his smoking habits.

The blue fire in Neil’s eyes wanes until all that’s left is the ocean, calm and gentle and vast, and Andrew feels like he’s drowning.

“Andrew,” Neil says, and Andrew snatches his gaze away, breath hitching, because _Neil can see him_.

“I answered your question,” he says, voice steely, inhibiting any further discussion.

Because he isn’t looking at him, he doesn’t know what sort of expression Neil has on his face right now, but Neil says “Alright” in the same quiet voice he used when he said Andrew’s name.

Andrew could have saved his turn for later, but that would beat the purpose of having Neil ask him a question just now. He summons all sense of equanimity, recalling how easy it used to be, to just throw up his wall of indifference and distance himself from everything and everyone.

The music swells into something brash and far too loud, and some of the students whoop along to the beat.

“What was the reason you moved around so much?”

He has the grace to actually look at Neil when he poses this question, so he witnesses the precise moment Neil’s expression shutters, his mouth a terse line.

“If I hadn’t, I would have been dead a long time ago.”

All noise seems to fade out of Andrew’s ears, the pulsing atmosphere suspended in time.

“When I was ten, my mother and I ran away from home. My father then made it his life’s mission to kill me, so we ran and ran and ran, until we couldn’t run anymore.”

Andrew is unfazed, even if the frost in Neil’s eyes tell him that Neil expects him to recoil, almost challenging him to. “And have you stopped running?”

Neil stares off to the side. “About five years ago, a very powerful man offered me a deal. Apparently, he was my father’s boss – the head of a crime family. He told me that I was supposed to be sold to his father when I was ten. By the time he approached me, there was no point in taking me in, since his father was dead. And he had decided to cut his losses wherever he could.”

He sucks in a deep breath. The quake in his hands belies the composure in his voice and on his face. “My father’s life for my freedom,” he says quietly, detachedly. “If I killed my father, I’d be free of any debts.”

“So you killed him,” Andrew says.

“So I killed him,” Neil confirms. He slides his gaze back to Andrew’s, his lips upturned in a savage smile as he gestures to the left side of his face. “I even got a few souvenirs.”

“And are you?” Andrew says. _Free_.

 _Because I’m not,_ his mind shouts, _I’m not, I’m not, I’m not._

Neil’s smile dwindles until it is a small, self-deprecating thing. “I don’t know if I ever will be.”

Andrew decides that that is enough truth for one night. For people like them, revealing bits of themselves is like handing their opponents a dagger while hoping that they won’t get killed, and now they are both exhausted and unnerved, blood under their nails when it hits them that _oh, I’m still alive_.

Neil runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “To be honest, this is not where I wanted the night to go.”

Andrew tips his head to the side a little in silent question.

Neil’s smile is more genuine now, a little lazy, a little devilish. It’s a good look on him. “I was actually hoping you’d ask me to dance with you.”

Andrew clamps his jaw to keep his expression still. “I don’t dance.”

Neil stares at him for a while longer, then turns to observe the dance floor, a slow, lilting melody pouring from the speakers. Andrew sees Nicky drifting to one side while his friends pair off to slow-dance.

“What a shame,” Neil says.

Yes, Andrew thinks, what a goddamn shame.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know cheesecake factory is a family-friendly place but roland and andrew had to hook up _somewhere._  
>  also I’m sorry for how long it took to update – life has been hectic and will continue to be so in the coming weeks, so I might not get the next chapter up any time soon. 
> 
> idk but I feel super meh about this chapter.... as usual, i'd love to know what you guys think, so pls hmu
> 
> my [tumblr ](http://nakasomethingkun.tumblr.com)


	5. megaphone to my chest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flowers are planted. Pizzas are eaten. More secrets are revealed. Bridges are rebuilt. How many ways can you tell a person that you like them without telling them that you like them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs: Mentions of underage drinking, referenced/implied rape/non-con, descriptions of scars, referenced/implied homophobia
> 
> Please don't hesitate to let me know if there's anything else i need to add. And English isn't my first language, so feel free to correct me on any mistakes you see.
> 
> Title of chapter is from Lorde's "The Louvre". (Y'all I love her so much!1!)

“Do your readings,” Andrew says, but he sounds like he couldn’t care less whether his students do their readings or not.

The bell rings to signal the end of the last period, and they all file out of the classroom, eager to leave the confines of the school.

Andrew lets out a measured breath through his mouth, tension leaking out of his shoulders.

He is exhausted. Talking is part and parcel of being a teacher, and although he only ever teaches in a monotone, it still requires him to talk more than he prefers to. Other people find it odd – unnerving, even – that he barely speaks, but he thinks it should make sense, since he uses up his word quota talking to a class full of teenagers who couldn’t give less of a fuck about Ernest Hemmingway.

With some people, though, talking and listening don’t feel like a chore. With the right person, he thinks he might even be willing to listen to them talk endlessly.

Andrew collects his things into his messenger bag, organizes his desk, slips on his jacket, and exits the classroom. It’s a Wednesday, which means that Nicky is meeting with the drama club, which means that Andrew has to find a way to kill time before he can drive them both home. At this point in the semester though, it is possible that he has to stay until much later, since opening night is edging closer and closer by the day. He could always tell Nicky to hitch a ride with Matt, but Andrew has always preferred to keep a close eye on his things.

A part of him wants to go to the auditorium, to drop in during rehearsals; it wouldn’t be a terrible way to past the time, because Neil would be there.

Another part of him doesn’t want to do that for the same exact reason.

Andrew is not avoiding Neil. He still attends the morning meetings, but when he catches Neil staring at him, he doesn’t stare back – a feat that proves to be much, much harder than he thought it would be. When Neil smiles at him from across the table, discreet like a shared whisper, he pretends he doesn’t see him. He hasn’t been up to the roof either, opting to go through a nicotine withdrawal than being alone with Neil. This morning, just as he was about to leave the conference room, Wymack had called out to him, perceptive eyes darting between him and Neil’s retreating back. Wymack had opened his mouth to say something, but had seemed to change his mind, flapping his hand in a forget-it gesture.

Andrew is not avoiding Neil.

Bag slung over his shoulder, Andrew leaves the main building through the back doors to cross the courtyard and head to the library. When he trudges down the stone steps, he spots Bee kneeling on the garden patch beside the stairs, her hair pulled back by a yellow kerchief and her hands protected by a pair of ghastly orange work gloves. Andrew rounds the steps and walks to where she is, observing the way she’s lifting a bulb from a wooden bucket and gently placing it in a hole she’s dug.

She looks up at him, glasses sliding down her nose, and gives him a wide smile.

“Hello, Andrew,” she says.

He nods in greeting, and after some consideration, crouches down next to her, folding his arms over his knees.

“I’m planting daffodils,” Bee says, picking a bulb up for Andrew to see. “Mr. Jenkins gave us a lot this year.”

The man who owns the flower shop a few streets away from the school. Andrew has always suspected that his generosity to the school has been fueled by his crush on Bee.

“Don’t we have a gardener for this,” Andrew points out, staring blankly at her dirt-stained gloves.

Her smile only grows bigger at this. “I volunteered to do it.”

Andrew responds with a non-committal hum.

“Is it alright if I asked for your help?” she asks pleasantly, holding out a pair of gardening gloves.

Andrew doesn’t say anything as he puts his bag away, takes the gloves, and pulls them over his hands.

They spend the next half an hour like that, quietly and methodically planting the daffodil bulbs. When they’re done with that patch, they go on to the second one that’s on the other side of the stairs.

“How has November been treating you?” Bee asks, straightening out her skirt after she removes her gloves. Andrew doesn’t know how she’s remained stain-free.

Andrew continues to water the soil where the bulbs have been planted.

“Like any other month in the year.”

“It’s a little warmer this year than it was last year, don’t you agree? I want to say that it’s a good thing, but it makes it sound like I am in favor of climate change.” Bee chuckles, and Andrew is transported back to a time in his life where he would sit across Betsy Dobson in her office for a whole hour every week, staring stone-faced at her as she chattered away. It took a very long time before he spoke to her about anything, but he’s glad he did; it had helped. She had helped.

She looks at Andrew right now, the cluster of crow’s feet around her eyes all too familiar. “But really, how are you?”

Andrew drains the watering can and doesn’t look at her when he says, “You are not my therapist anymore.”

“I’m not,” Bee says agreeably, “but it’s nicer this way, I think. For example, I can tell you, unreservedly, that I care about you without worrying about breaching any professional boundaries, now that I’m no longer your psychiatrist.”

Andrew drops the can next to his feet and kicks a stone off the soil, watching it roll away. This isn’t the first time Bee has alluded to or said anything of the sort, but the fact that she was the first person to have ever said that he mattered to somebody and that she could say it to his face still makes him a little angry – how  _genuine_  she is about it makes him more than a little angry. She’s not his shrink anymore, but he’s chosen to keep her in his life, and he intends to stick with that decision. His current therapist is good – Bee recommended her, after all – but he doesn’t know if this is something he could to talk to anyone else about.

He swallows, hard.

“I am…” he starts, then falters. He curls his hands into fists, working his jaw.

“I am afraid,” he grits out.

“What of?” Bee asks gently.

“Of – wanting,” he answers after a long pause. Of being known.

Bee nods, her small, omnipresent smile an encouragement. “Have you thought about why that is so?”

Andrew gives a little dip of his chin in a nod. He still practices the things he’s learned from his time in Bee’s office. When Bee had taught him how to process his feelings for the first time, he had apathetically told her that  _I have no such things as_   _emotions_. She had simply smiled and said  _I would have to disagree with you on that_.

“That’s good. If you don’t mind me asking, what will you do, to deal with the fear?” 

The question should be: will he even  _do_  something? This isn’t something he can fight with his fists and knives, something tangible. This is the clenching of his guts, the drumbeat of his heart, the swoop in his stomach – right before the ground hits him and his bones shatter. He’s not sure this is something he can deal with, even if he wants to.

Andrew remains silent.

Bee doesn’t press him, but she says, “This might sound trite, but I am a firm believer that a person is bigger than their fear. Our brains like to tell us that we can’t do or have something, but it’s often not true.”

“It is foolish more so than it is trite.”

Bee’s smile remains unfaltering. “I wonder if it is.”

Andrew looks away.

Bee pushes her glasses up her nose. Looking at the garden patch, she says, “I hope they’ll bloom beautifully when spring comes.”

*

The sun is setting by the time Nicky emerges from the main building, laughing with his friends. When he sees Andrew leaning against the Maserati, he jogs up to him.

“Have you been waiting here for the past two hours?”

“I haven’t,” Andrew says plainly. After helping Bee out, he had spent some time in the library, then he had stood outside for a while, thumbing the lever of his lighter and tapping his pack of cigarettes against his thigh. He pushes himself off the car and starts for the building. “Wait here.”

“I – hey, where are you going?” Nicky shouts after him, but Andrew ignores him.

He passes by a few students on the way to the auditorium, including Robin, who frowns a little as she says, “Mr. Minyard?”

He waves her off and goes inside the theatre, striding down the aisle, past the rows of empty chairs. On the stage, Neil is in a discussion with Dan and Matt, his back to the entrance.

Dan is talking with her arms crossed, and Matt nudges her to unsubtly alert her of Andrew’s presence. When they both stare at him with open curiosity, Neil finally turns around.  

He’s in a creamy blue sweater, worn over a white button down, his hair a bit more disheveled than it normally is. It’s physically painful to look at him, at how good-looking he is, even after a long day at work. But looking at Neil is easier than not looking at him, salving the ache that’s been fermenting in Andrew’s chest over the past few days from his pathetic attempt at distancing himself.

“Oh,” is all Neil says, before he turns away again, finishing his conversation with Dan and Matt and sending them home. He disappears behind the curtains for a while to switch the stage lights off. When he reappears, he neatly sidesteps the cans of paint and unfinished props, going down the stairs at the right side of the stage. He walks to a table that’s pressed close to the front of the stage, clearing away his things. Andrew stands a little away from him, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, curled into fists to quell the tremor.

When Neil dons his jacket, hoists his bag over his shoulder, and walks up the aisle towards the doors, Andrew follows. Right as they step into the hallway, Neil pivots on his heels. Andrew stops just in time to prevent a collision.

“What made you change your mind?” Neil asks.

Andrew lifts an eyebrow.

“You’ve decided to stop avoiding me,” Neil clarifies, head cocked to the side a little, blue eyes chilly and terrifying like a blizzard.

“I was not avoiding you,” Andrew says.

Neil’s lips twist into a scornful smile. “I thought we’ve established that you’re a terrible liar.”

Andrew realizes right then – perhaps a little belatedly – that Neil is upset, and incredibly so.

While he’s digesting this, Neil’s false smile falls off his face, replaced by something fragile. It disappears as soon as it appears, and then Neil is turning away. Andrew’s first instinct is to catch his hand, but then he remembers that Neil doesn’t like to be grabbed by his wrists, so Andrew goes for his elbow instead, snagging the sleeve of his jacket.

Neil stops. Breathes in deeply, breathes out slowly. He turns around, wrenching out of Andrew’s hold as their eyes meet. Even glaciers don’t look as cold.

“It was a mistake,” Andrew says quietly, an answer to Neil’s first question. He is not above – or below, for that matter – admitting as much.

Neil’s eyes flicker, almost imperceptibly, concrete decaying with the downward tug of his lips. Andrew realizes right then – perhaps more than a little belatedly – that Neil is  _hurt_ , and the additional realization that he is the cause sears through him like hot coals.

“So you’ve decided to stop avoiding me,” Neil says, heavy with derision, words like gunshot and eyes hollow like smoking shells.

“I don’t need any excuses. It’s not like I wouldn’t understand,” he continues spitefully, “if you had decided that I wasn’t interesting anymore, that I wasn’t worth your  _precious_  time.”

He sucks in a breath, and Andrew doesn’t miss how it shakes. “But a little warning would’ve been nice, before you ignored me like I was nothing. Did you think it was fine to hurt me, because I already have all these scars? What’s another gash to add to the mess, right?”

Andrew clamps his hand over Neil’s mouth – he’s had enough. He doesn’t channel any pressure into the touch, but it does an effective job of shutting Neil up regardless. Neil’s lips are soft against his palm, his breath moist, and Andrew withdraws when he becomes aware of his thundering pulse, fluttering against Neil’s cheek. He hopes Neil didn’t notice. It doesn’t look like he did, mouth flattened and eyebrows wefted, the volatile embers of his ire waiting for the spill of kerosene. His eyes, though, are glassy, like they could break with the tiniest impact.

Andrew doesn’t say sorry, because he doesn’t believe in regrets, because that’s not what Neil is looking for. His heart throbs like a bruise in his chest; he means something to Neil – he means enough to Neil that he gets wounded when he thought that Andrew doesn’t care for him anymore.

“It was not my intention,” he says, trying – and probably failing – to sound completely even, “to hurt you.” He thinks that he would sooner slit his own throat than do that, and that might be the scariest part.

“Then why did you –” Neil makes a vague gesture with his hand, then drops it over his stomach, gripping the strap of his bag. He’s still frowning a little, but he doesn’t look angry anymore, only – sad. Lost.

Andrew opens his mouth, just barely, then closes it. He swallows the lump of fear in his throat, the quake in his hands rattling him to his core.

Just like that, Neil’s expression shifts. “You don’t have to tell me,” he says, voice firm in its honesty. “I won’t make you say anything you don’t want to say.” He looks solid, serious; the side of him that says  _okay_ , or  _alright_ , without any judgment and without flinching away when Andrew exposes the ugliness lying under his skin. It makes Andrew want to strip off every piece of his armor, until he’s down to his very bones. It’s dangerous, and it’s stupid, and Andrew yearns for it anyway.

His hand twitches at his side. When Andrew reaches out again, it is to slowly hook his fingers into the collar of Neil’s sweater, the wool soft on his skin. Neil doesn’t move, not at all perturbed by the contact, by the tremor in Andrew’s grasp.

Andrew gives a small tug, like he can’t quite believe Neil is real and tangible, something he can touch. Neil continues to look at Andrew, his gaze steady.

And for now, it is enough.

*

Later on, when Nicky comes barging in complaining about how hungry he is, Andrew finally lets go. As they walk along the corridors out of the building, Neil laughs, unexpected. He presses the heel of his palms over his eyes like he’s tired and runs a hand through his hair.

“Can’t believe I went off on you like that.”

“I can.”

Neil glares at him for that. But then he pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes for a moment. “I think it’s the stress. These drama kids are going to be the death of me.”

“That is unexpected, since you seem to have an inclination for dramatics yourself.”

It all goes downhill from there; Andrew gets roped into chaperoning the drama club for their so-called ‘camp night’, which is that time of the semester where they stay overnight at school, mainly for tech rehearsals and a few costume fitting sessions.

That’s how he finds himself packing an overnight bag and hauling it into the car on Friday morning when he leaves for school. Nicky is  _ecstatic_.

Andrew doesn’t even know why he’s agreed to this.

Actually, he does. In return for accompanying Neil in his supervising crusade, Neil is joining them for Thanksgiving. One thing had let to another and Andrew had allowed himself be convinced into letting Aaron Minyard, pediatrician and Andrew Minyard’s wombmate, come over for Thanksgiving.

But that is something he can dwell on later. For now, he needs to focus on the task at hand, which is to procure enough sleeping bags for the drama club kids. Those who have their own have brought it with them, and those who don’t are with Andrew in the nature club’s supply room to borrow their sleeping bags.

“I don’t see why you could not do this,” Andrew tells Renee, referring to her previous position as the drama club’s advisor. The fact that she is also in charge of the nature club has always been a bonus, because what one club is lacking she can supply with the other. It should make sense that she be the second chaperone, not Andrew.

“I think Neil would be more comfortable working with you,” she says, smiling as she jots down the transaction in her records. The kids carry the sleeping bags to the auditorium, excitable chatter filling the hallways, and Andrew leaves Renee with one final unimpressed stare.

She tinkles her fingers in goodbye, smiling all the while. “Good luck, and have fun.”

As if luck could do them any favors.

When he returns to the auditorium though, he thinks that maybe he could use a  _little_  luck, and a lot of patience. The thing is, it’s 3 o’clock on a Friday evening. The students have just finished a long, uneventful day of classes, and no teenager in their right mind would want to jump onto their next set of responsibilities right afterwards, especially not when they’re surrounded by their friends.

“I’m auditioning for the role of future plans and I’ll be singing ‘Fake Your Death’ by My Chemical Romance.”

“Let’s hear it, Kyle!”

Luckily for them, Andrew has a lot of patience to spare.

They’re congregated in the front row seats and at the foot of the stage, taking turns to “audition” on stage. Neil is nowhere to be seen, but Liz, the president of the club, is there. It doesn’t seem like she’s going to stop the nonsense any time soon though.

Just as Nicky climbs onto the stage, Neil enters the auditorium, one of the students in tow. He tells the student to put his things away and comes up next to Andrew, shoulders sagging as he sighs.

“Were you trying to run off?” Andrew asks blandly.

Neil rolls his eyes. “I had to deal with Darren’s situation,” he explains, flicking his chin towards the student that followed him in. “He didn’t turn in his parents’ authorization form.”

“And yet,” Andrew says.

Neil shrugs. “It wasn’t too much trouble to get his parents in.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“They’re not the most attentive parents out there, but they could have been worse,” Neil says with a thin, humorless smile.

“Better to have neglectful parents than murderous ones,” Andrew says, guessing Neil’s train of thoughts. “Hmm. Highly debatable.”

“Freddie!” someone screeches. “Did you just steal my pop tarts? I’m going to kick your ass!”

“That’s your cue,” Andrew says.

Under his breath, Neil mutters, “Here we go.”

*

“Let’s run through this scene again,” Neil announces, clapping his hands once for them to start.

The stage director signals the actors their cue, and the lights dim.

They’ve run this scene three times now. The first time, an overhead light unceremoniously popped. The second, the sound system mysteriously crashed. Andrew really wants the third and current attempt to be the final one – he’s had enough of seeing the prince wander into the woods and fall off his horse that’s made up of two gangly teenagers.

In a murmur, Neil says, “Third time’s the charm, right?”

Andrew looks at him, but Neil’s focus is on the act unfolding on stage. Andrew catches the upward turn of his mouth though, and stares at him for a while longer.

They get it right this time, and Neil releases a quiet breath of relief. He announces a break as he enters the stage from behind the curtains, and the students dissolve into relieved murmurs and groans. A few of them get called over by the head of the costume department to have their wardrobe checked and adjusted; it’s a cue-to-cue tech rehearsal, which means that nobody really has to say their lines, but Liz thought it would be a good idea to have some of them be in costume to see if their wardrobe needs any refurbishing before the dress rehearsals; the first dress rehearsal will be on the following morning.

Some flock over to Neil, and others sprawl across the audience seats and on the stage itself. Drinks and fruits are passed around, and Andrew watches as Dan inspects her fake mustache on the mirror that Matt, who is one of the stagehands, is holding for her. Here, behind the curtains and surrounded by their theatrical friends, they don’t look like the soccer team’s captain and the football team’s star linebacker that they are.

Andrew does have to admit that having the prince played by a girl and one of the handmaids by a boy is rather amusing.

Neil returns to his side, head tilted in question.

“What are you thinking about?”

“About how Dan can play a prince better than any of the boys in the club could,” Andrew replies impassively.

“Do you find it weird?”

Andrew raises a shoulder in a half-shrug; he doesn’t really care.

Quietly, Neil says, “I adopted the identity of a girl for a whole year, right after my mom and I ran away.”

Andrew studies him. He doesn’t seem bothered or embarrassed at all by this admission, but he does seem a little mournful, a little nostalgic.

“I grew my hair out and wore skirts and everything. It worked for a while, but then my voice broke and we moved away.”

A sudden burble of excitement among the students cuts Andrew’s chance at a reply. Neil looks out across the auditorium, where a pizza delivery guy is valiantly defending a stack of pizza boxes from an army of hungry teenagers.

The rest of them hop off the stage and make a run towards him, joining their friends in their scramble for dinner. Neil apparently knows a lost cause when he sees one, because he doesn’t yell at them and try to get them in order. He jumps off the stage too and ambles up the aisle, but stops abruptly and looks over his shoulder at Andrew.

He beckons him over with an incline of his head, and backtracks towards the stage when Andrew keeps on staring at the drop between the stage and the floor, his pulse quickening. He makes to go around the stage towards the stairs, but Neil asks, “Why don’t you just jump?”

He has his hands folded over each other at the edge of the stage, his chin propped on top.

Andrew can’t tell him that he makes it a rule to never jump off anything that’s higher than two steps of stairs. The last time he did, he had broken an arm. He must have been staring for too long, because Neil asks, “Andrew, are you afraid of heights?”

Andrew doesn’t respond.

Neil frowns. “Andrew, you can’t be. Why are you always on the roof?”

Andrew brings a finger to his throat, feeling for the rapid beat of his pulse.

“To feel,” he says truthfully.

Murky waters settle into blue clarity, and Neil stares at him with that too-calm, disquieting gaze.

“If you want to try jumping,” he says, “you can hold my hand.”

He’s not teasing Andrew, and there is no trace of a joke in his words; he is absolutely serious about his offer. It is also just that: an offer that Andrew can refuse, not a dare or even a suggestion.

Andrew’s jaw ticks, his heart galloping at the speed of the light. The emotions he keeps under a tight leash jerk and struggle, and he feels them slipping loose. He takes a step towards the lip of the stage, and Neil extends a hand. Andrew stares at Neil’s long, slim fingers, at the creases of his palm, and takes his hand. Andrew’s body trembles.  

He screws his eyes shut, and leaps off the edge. 

He only opens his eyes when his feet are firmly planted to the ground, his knuckles white from how hard he’s clutching Neil’s hand.

Neil doesn’t comment on it, lets Andrew hold his hand for as long he needs it. His legs are vibrating and his heart is walloping the confines of his chest until he feels it splintering. Neil’s hand is a brand on his palm.

A shudder passes down his spine, but he doesn’t think it is because he is reacting negatively to the skin-on-skin contact; it was a voluntary decision, after all. Fear might be the reason, but of what, Andrew isn’t sure.

“Hey, are you in charge around here?” the pizza guy asks, out of breath. The kids are looking over his shoulder, practically drooling.

Andrew releases Neil’s hand and takes a step off to the side. Apathy pulls a bag over his head and ties a knot around his neck, but his heartrate is still a drum parade. He flexes his fingers, his skin buzzing with the shape of Neil’s hand.

Neil deals with the delivery guy, who’s probably traumatized by the whole experience, and gives him a fat tip.

Dinner is eaten and rehearsals are continued. Andrew offers his input and does a few small odd jobs when Neil requests them. Andrew convinces himself that he only does them because it is too much trouble, at this point, to deny Neil of things.

They blunder through a few more scenes, but any mishaps are dealt with swiftly, and a few minutes before twelve, Neil calls it a night. The students have been granted access to use the locker room showers if they want to, but most just utilize the nearby restrooms to brush their teeth and relieve themselves; they’re all too exhausted to even cause a ruckus.

Liz has the club members arrange their sleeping bags in a way that fits everybody on stage, with Neil and Andrew lying near the stairs on either side of the stage. A couple of them demand that they be allowed to sleep in the dressing room since there’s a couch there, but Neil sternly tells them that he wants everyone to be in the same place, where he can keep an eye on them. Two girls – one of them Robin – have the misfortune of being placed closest to Andrew, and they nervously bid him a good night as they burrow into their sleeping bags.

Neil turns off most of the lights, leaving only the ones near the exits on, and Andrew lies on his back, staring up at the ceiling until his eyes adjust to the dark. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to get any sleep tonight, not with two dozen other people around him.

Somebody whispers and another giggles, the sound muffled. There is a rustle of clothes against the synthetic fabric of a sleeping bag. Across the stage, a bumble of snores. Andrew slinks out of his sleeping bag and the extra quilt he brought with him and paces down the stairs, counting his steps towards the main doors.

Goosebumps trickle over his skin like ice cubes; the hallways are drafty, and he is only in a t-shirt, a pair of sweatpants, and his armbands. He considers going back inside for his cigarette and lighter, to at least have something to occupy his mouth and hands, but decides against it; it’s not like he would light one up, anyway. Leaning against the wall opposite the auditorium doors, Andrew crosses his arms over his chest in a feeble attempt to ward off the cold.

One of the doors open, just a fraction, and Neil materializes in front of him, dressed in an orange t-shirt, grey cardigan, track pants, and fuzzy socks. His red hair is matted on one side, his eyes startlingly bright. Looks like Andrew isn’t the only one battling insomnia.

“I heard you going out,” Neil says, voice muted, a susurration of the night.     

“Couldn’t sleep,” Andrew says simply.

Neil settles next to him. “Me neither.”   

The fluorescent light at the end of the corridor flickers. The ancient vending machine at the other end wheezes and whirrs. Neil’s socked feet shuffle against the smooth tiles. Andrew tries not to turn and stare at Neil’s features, rendered softer by the night.

“You know what I could use right now?” Neil pipes up, giving Andrew an excuse to tilt his face towards him, an eyebrow lifted.

“Some alcohol,” Neil continues.

That takes Andrew a little by surprise.

The corner of Neil’s eyes crinkle with something like mischief. Andrew hates that – he hates how Neil can smile with his eyes.  

He tears his gaze away like he’s tearing off a limb.

“I know where Wymack keeps his liquor.”

In his peripheral, he sees the quirk of Neil’s mouth.

“Are you suggesting a break-in, Mr. Minyard?”

“You have yet to prove the lock-picking talents you once claimed to possess, Mr. Josten.”

Neil makes a show of cracking his knuckles and rolling his shoulders.

“Alright, then.”

*

“Are you saying that a literature degree would prove more useful in the event of a zombie apocalypse?”

“That is not what I said.”

Neil squints. “But you were implying it.”

“I simply do not see how a Math degree can be better.”

“You could if you spent less time reading novels.”

“That would be blasphemous.”

“Lucky you’re not a religious man, then.”

Andrew gives him a flat look. Neil hides his grin behind the rim of his red SOLO cup.

“A polyglot with a knack for mathematics and picking locks,” Andrew muses, aloof, “how many talents can one man have?”

“I can juggle knives too,” Neil says, and Andrew isn’t sure if he’s joking or not.

Neil’s cheeks are stained a flattering pink, but he is lucid, albeit a little more generous with his smiles. Andrew himself welcomes the warmth prickling his skin, the singe of whiskey familiar in his throat.

“For somebody who claims to never drink, you can hold your liquor rather well,” he observes out loud.

“I didn’t say I never drink,” Neil says, waving his almost-empty cup around, “just that I rarely do.”

“That does not answer why you have a high tolerance.”

Neil knocks back the last of his drink. He looks at the bottom of his cup, thinking.

“When we were on the run,” he starts slowly, “we couldn’t go to hospitals when we got injured. So when I had to be stitched up or anything like that, my mother had me drink a lot, cheap bourbon usually, enough to numb some of the pain.” He gives the ghost of a shrug. “I’ve never liked the taste, but sometimes I find myself wanting to drink.”

“So you essentially began drinking when you were ten.”

Neil’s half-smile is derisive. “Essentially.”

“I am surprised you didn’t grow up to be an alcoholic.” Andrew refills both his and Neil’s cups. “I would like to accuse your mother of being irresponsible, but I have not had a lot of experience with laudable parental figures myself.”

Neil probably knows his history of being dumped into foster care right after he was born, given how prevalent that factoid is, so Andrew might as well.

Neil doesn’t take a sip from his cup. His eyes are sharp, icicles lancing through Andrew’s coat of armor.

“But you’ve had some,” he says, not quite a question.

Andrew meets his gaze, unflinching.

These are all behind him, but dredging up the past or explaining himself has never been one of Andrew’s favorite things to do. No one has ever understood, and Andrew has stopped expecting them to a long time ago. He wants Neil to know, though, which should be definitive proof that he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. 

“She was my thirteenth home,” he says, remote. “She wanted to adopt me.”

“But,” Neil says.

“But,” Andrew says, fingers strangling his cup, “she had a son, who understood brotherly affection differently than most people did.”

His words are deliberate, cold, even through the bile incinerating his throat.

“He hurt you,” Neil says, calm except for the quiet rage blazing through his eyes. “Where is he now?”

Andrew takes a long swig of his drink, trying to wash away the bitterness desiccating his tongue with a different kind of poison.

“Prison,” he says dully after he’s done. Locked away for half a century, with no help from Andrew. The kids who came after him were the ones brave enough to come forward. Andrew didn’t even think there would be any more after him.

But alas.   

Neil’s eyes glaze over, rain after a fire. “Nothing is ever free, is it?”

“Nothing good ever is,” Andrew says.

Neil nods absently. He scoots over until he’s beside Andrew, sitting with their backs against the wall on the floor, right across the doors that lead to the auditorium.

The effects eventually wear off, and the cold creeps up Andrew’s body once again. He shivers, failing to suppress it.

Neil’s cardigan falls over his lap, and he looks over to Neil hugging his arms to his chest. Andrew’s eyes trail past the scars around Neil’s wrists to the burn marks that run up to his elbows in scattered pink whorls, interspersed by thin, pale lacerations, all of them faded with time. He forces his eyes up to Neil’s face; it’s schooled into nonchalance, but he doesn’t meet Andrew’s critical gaze.

“Take it,” he says, referring to his cardigan.

“I do not want it,” Andrew says, practically throwing it back at Neil.

“You might not want it,” Neil retorts, passing it back to Andrew again, “but you obviously need it.”

“And you don’t?” Andrew fires back, anger crawling into the calm of his voice.

Neil scoffs lightly. “I’ve had years to get used to all the staring. I don’t need it.”

Andrew shoots to his feet, hands furled into fists. Neil looks up at him, chin jutted out defiantly as if he’s waiting for an argument.

“Why? Do the scars bother you that much?”

He’s definitely spoiling for a fight alright, but Andrew refuses to take the bait.

“You know they don’t,” he bites out.

“Do I?”

Andrew probably deserves that one, but he channels his focus on choking down his temper instead of reacting further to Neil’s words, bullets that scratch close to the target.

“Stay,” Andrew tells him, jaw stiff. He turns towards the auditorium doors, retracing his steps back to the stage to where his quilt and pillow are. He grabs the blanket and walks back out, grinding his teeth so hard that he’s surprised they’re not fractured.

He’s furious in a way that he hasn’t felt in a long time, at how Neil can carelessly expose his scars to Andrew like that. He might be fine with it, and it really isn’t Andrew’s place to assume that he is forcing himself to do it, but it still sparks an inexplicable rage in Andrew. Perhaps he is angry at his own cowardice, hiding behind concise words and a seam of black fabric and a mask of indifference.

Neil has stayed put like Andrew told him to, his cardigan strewn across his lap. He keeps his mouth shut as Andrew settles back down in his spot and drapes the quilt over both of them, their shoulders brushing.

Neil bunches the edge of the blanket in his hand, lips pressed together.

“I…” he starts, then tapers off. “I’m not forcing myself, you know,” he tries again.

“But you are not comfortable with it either.”

“I don’t know,” Neil confesses, “but I know that I don’t mind it if it’s you.”

Andrew cuts him a sharp look, but Neil’s gaze remains true and open like an afternoon sky.

There is a wall that separates Andrew from the rest of the world. He likes to imagine that Neil is standing on the other side, throwing paper airplanes over the wall until Andrew flies one back to him, until Andrew climbs up to the top and peers over the edge to see that Neil is already staring at him, head tipped back like he wants to kiss the moon.

Andrew hovers a hand over Neil’s arm and asks, “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil whispers.

Andrew’s fingers graze over a particularly long gash and trace around the circle of a burn mark. Whoever did this did it to maim, to torture, and the thought of it flares a different kind of rage in Andrew, the kind of rage that could raze empires to the ground and bring mountains to their knees.

He moves his hand down to Neil’s wrist, not quite touching it, examining Neil’s face for any minute shift in his expression. Neil, who has been watching him the entire time, nods. Andrew strokes two fingers over the disfigured skin circling his wrist. Neil empties out a slow breath.

“Do you really mean what you said,” Neil says, “about my scars?”

“I would not have said it if I did not mean it.”

Neil nods again. “Thank you,” he says, butterfly-soft.

“Shut up,” Andrew tells him, lacking any heat.

Nighttime doesn’t feel as void and frightening as it usually does when it’s just the two of them, shouting whispers in an abandoned hallway. It is a sense of intimacy and calm that isn’t afforded to people like Andrew, whose demons usually crawl out to play when the rest of the world is asleep.

Andrew removes his hand, every single one of his nerves pulsating, and Neil slips his cardigan back on.

Andrew tugs the blanket up to his chin and closes his eyes. He focuses on Neil’s quiet breathing, on the pocket of warmth beside him, and reminds himself that he really should know better than to do this, whatever this is.

After all, nothing good is ever free.

*

School continues on as usual and Andrew slogs through the days while pretending that Neil doesn’t make it all a little more worthwhile.

Sometime in the middle of the night during camp, Matt had stalked out of the auditorium, and had frozen when he saw Andrew and Neil on the floor. Andrew had narrowed his eyes at him, more out of bleariness than anything, as Neil jolted awake from a light doze at the sound of the door.

“I’m just – buying some snacks from the vending machine,” Matt had said, a deer in headlights. "I get hungry at night."

“Mm, okay, yeah, go ahead,” Neil had mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

Matt had nodded, slowly, glancing back at them repeatedly as he went.

Andrew couldn’t wait to see how that would spawn a new gossip among the students. 

Neil had just yawned, slumping a little closer to Andrew without touching him. He had made a noise of contentment, low in his throat, and a different kind of heat had licked up Andrew’s neck.

He had neatly ignored that too.

Thanksgiving trundles onto their doorstep, bringing Aaron Minyard along.

Andrew hasn’t seen him in two years. His hair is a little longer, his eyes framed by boxy glasses that resemble the ones Andrew got for himself early in the summer. Andrew almost wants to laugh.

He’s a little early, failing to hide his curiosity with the way his eyes roam around the living room even as his posture remains rigid, awkward, entering a space that he’s never been invited to before. Nicky is hanging Aaron’s jacket up on one of the hooks near the door while his mouth blathers away at record speed. It’s impressive how he doesn’t run out of things to talk about; Nicky calls Aaron on a regular basis, and Andrew thinks that Aaron, despite his propensity for disdainful behavior, probably appreciates that he can keep tabs on his brother and cousin. They both haven’t noticed Andrew standing in the shadows of the hallway, and Nicky yelps in surprise on his way back to the kitchen when he finally spots him.

“Jesus, Andrew. You almost gave me a heart attack.”

Aaron snaps his attention towards the kitchen; he should have a clear view of it from where he’s sitting in the living room, and Nicky’s eyes flit between Andrew and Aaron multiple times before Andrew lets out an inaudible sigh and steps away from his bedroom door.

He stands near the stove, staring disinterestedly at the oven.

Nicky somehow gets the message and says, “The turkey should be ready by five. I also bought lots of chorizo, just in case the turkey doesn’t turn out well.” He laughs, a jittery sound, glancing at Aaron, then back at Andrew again.

He had brought Nicky grocery shopping yesterday, so he knows that most of the food they’re eating tonight are pre-packaged. He doesn’t see why he should cook just because his brother is coming. He did, however, make some sweet potato casserole earlier that day, topped with a lot of marshmallows. It’s the one thing he can compromise on.

“There’s not much to do here,” Nicky says, wringing his hands, “so why don’t you – go socialize.”

Andrew flicks him a bored look. Neil had been the one to coax him into letting Nicky invite Aaron over, but that agreement doesn’t encompass a promise to play nice.

A knock at the door has all three of them directing their gazes to the front hall.

“I can get that,” Aaron says, expression a little unsure.

He unlocks the door and swings it open, and Andrew hears Neil’s voice saying, “Hey.” There’s a split-second pause before he continues, “I made some pie. Pumpkin, but I made it super sweet as an incentive for you to eat it.”

Andrew can’t see Neil’s or Aaron’s faces from where he’s standing, but he doesn’t have to. Aaron is probably confused as hell right now, and the half-smile Neil reserves for Andrew is probably slipping off his lips from the way he falls suddenly silent.

“You’re not Andrew.”

Andrew enters his line of sight right then.

“Astute observation,” he comments dryly.

The corners of Neil’s eyes crinkle like Andrew knew they would, and he slips inside, Aaron’s perplexed eyes following him.

“Here,” Neil says, handing Andrew the pie.

Andrew inspects it with a level stare. “You bake.”

“Occasionally,” Neil confirms. He looks over Andrew’s shoulder and smiles. “Hey, Nicky.”

“Hi, Mr. Josten,” Nicky replies, his grin a little wobbly. He comes closer and opens an arm in Aaron’s direction. “Meet my cousin, Aaron.”

“The doctor,” Neil says, expertly flashing his phony smile at Aaron.

Aaron regards him with ill-concealed suspicion. “And you are?”

“Neil Josten. I work at the school with Andrew.”

Aaron darts a glance at Andrew, then turns back to Neil. “They didn’t tell me you were coming.”

Neil feigns surprise. “Oh. No wonder you look so uncomfortable.”

“I don’t –” Aaron begins, probably trying to defend himself.

“Nicky, is there anything I can do to help with dinner?” Neil says over him. “I’m not much of a cook, but I’ll do my best.”

“We’re good, actually,” Nicky answers. “We’re just waiting for the turkey.”

“Great,” Neil chirps. He wears false amiability and cheer like an obtrusive top hat.

“You told me during my advisory period yesterday that Ms. Sutherland gave all of you homework for the weekend,” he continues. “I’ll help you with it, if you want.”

“Will you really?” Nicky asks, his face brightening up.

Andrew feels the twitch of his eyebrows as a tiny frown makes its way to his face. Neil meets and holds his gaze as he tells Nicky, “Of course I will.”

He raises a pointed eyebrow at Andrew as he follows Nicky to his room to help him with his calculus homework, leaving Andrew with Aaron.

Andrew absolutely hates him.

Unlike his twin, Aaron wears his displeasure plainly on his face. Mixed into that expression is uncertainty, discomfort, like being alone with the person who matches his DNA by a hundred percent is the most daunting thing he’s ever had to face. It is quite contrary to his usual foul disposition.

Once upon a time, it had been the two of them against the world. Then Tilda died, and the tide of grief that washed over Aaron had in turn drowned Andrew in a gulf of anger that killed him from the inside.

But a promise was a promise.

Andrew had gone to college because Aaron had wanted to; they had obtained sports scholarships – box lacrosse, the stupidest sport that Andrew has ever had the dishonor of playing – and Andrew had secured one part of a handcuff around his wrist and the other around Aaron’s. Whenever Aaron ventured too far, Andrew yanked the chain and reigned him back in with ruthless detachment. Then graduation came and their deal expired, and Aaron had sawed off his hand before Andrew could bring out the key.      

Once upon a time, Andrew had given up everything for a brother he never knew. Cass hadn’t known how to get in touch with Andrew and had turned to the Hemmicks for help. Luther had somehow thought that the campaign to appeal to Andrew’s morality could be made more effective if Aaron joined in. Andrew had torn up her letter and explained to Luther that no, he will not testify as a character witness and no, he will not call her or write back to her to console her over her son’s arrest. Aaron had somehow connected the dots, and he had been angry on Andrew’s behalf. Andrew supposes that was when Aaron had begun to rethink his decision to sever all ties with his twin brother.   

Once upon a time, Cass had been his lifeline. But she was venom dressed in a dream, and it had taken Andrew a while to accept that.

In the end, all of them had chosen somebody else over Andrew, and Andrew had learned that it is better to not feel anything, to not let himself get attached to anybody.

“I’m glad that Nicky isn’t moping around. When he called me this time last year he was in tears,” Aaron says. It is a predictable topic for an ice-breaker, and Andrew moves to sit on the sofa, staring blankly at the black television screen. Aaron sits across from Andrew on one of the beanbag chairs, lips pursed as he glares at Andrew.

“Are you just going to ignore me for the rest of the evening?”

Andrew’s done it for five whole years during college. One evening is going to be a cinch.

They hear Nicky’s voice going, “Oh, that makes much more sense!” from down the hallway.

“If you are, why did you even bother to let me come here? I have texted you and tried calling you a hundred times without you ever answering, and suddenly you’re allowing me to have Thanksgiving dinner with you. What gives?”  

Neil’s voice floats into the living room, something about derivatives and critical numbers, muffled by the walls.

Aaron shoots Andrew a shrewd look.

“Is it because of him?” he hisses.

Andrew returns his accusation with a cool look. It’s the first time he’s even made eye contact with him, and Aaron reels back a little in surprise, like even he can’t believe that that particular jab worked.

“What if it is?” Andrew intones. “Still harboring the same old prejudices, are we?”

“That’s not – that kind of thing doesn’t bother me, not anymore,” Aaron says, appearing mildly chastised but mostly miffed, “if not for my own sake, then for Nicky’s.”

Married life seems to have mellowed Aaron much more than Andrew had anticipated, but it might also be influenced by his impending fatherhood.

“Congratulations are in order, I suppose,” Andrew remarks, blasé.

Aaron’s nostrils flare, a clear sign of how disgruntled he is.

Andrew flicks his fingers lazily. “You are here now,” he points out, “so what is it exactly that you want?”

“A chance to talk,” Aaron says around a clenched jaw.

Andrew sighs like this is the most inconvenient thing he’s ever had to deal with the whole year. Perhaps Aaron isn’t the only one that has mellowed, jagged rocks sandpapered by lapping waves. “Talk, then.”

“I was just thinking,” Aaron swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, “that I don’t want our relationship to end the way it did.”

Andrew doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t stop Aaron either.

“I’ve been seeing a therapist,” Aaron continues, “and it’s…helped me. A lot.” He takes a deep breath, like he’s about to jump off a dive board and plunge into cold water.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you,” he says quietly, fists pressed against his knees and eyes trained to the floor, “for what you did to mom. But –” 

He meets Andrew’s gaze head-on, like he was never able to do back when the only people they had in the world was each other.

“But I understand now, why you did it, and I just – don’t want to lose you.”

He shifts, uncomfortable, pulling his gaze away. Andrew stares at the top of his head, turning Aaron’s words in his head over and over like stones, dissecting each one and breaking it down to its core components, then putting them back together again.

People always choose somebody else over Andrew. He is used to being the last resort, the undesirable option. When his deal with Aaron ended, he had resigned himself to merely existing, going through the motions of a quiet, lonely life and brokering small transactions here and there as he bides his time until death.

He closes his eyes, inhales, opens them. He is craving for a cigarette.

The timer on the stove shrills out a cry.

“Andrew, can you check on the turkey?” Nicky hollers from his room.

Andrew goes to check on the turkey. Aaron’s eyes track him, and as he throws on a pair of oven mitts, he says, “Don’t expect me to send you Christmas cards.”

Aaron blinks.

Then, the corner of his mouth flicks up, just a little.

*

When Nicky comes out of his room, he’s in a far more jovial mood, no longer walking on eggshells around his cousins. He does most of the talking during dinner, and he asks Aaron a lot of questions, to which Aaron answers dutifully but always sarcastically. There is never a bite to his words, though, when Nicky asks him about his little wife.

Nicky is trying really hard to get over the hurt of not having his parents invite him over for Thanksgiving, Andrew knows. This is the second year he’s been living with Andrew though, and he’s been slowly internalizing the fact that his parents aren’t going to change their minds any time soon, maybe not ever.

Andrew doesn’t talk much, and when he does, it’s all monosyllabic. When he feels Neil’s eyes on him, he lightly kicks his foot from under the table, and Neil averts his gaze, lips pressed together to refrain from smiling.

After they’ve cleared everything away and put the dishes in the washer, Nicky squeaks, phone held up in his hand.

“Look at this picture Beth posted on Instagram!”

Neil looks at the screen with an eyebrow raised when Nicky passes his phone over to him. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Doc Martens!” Nicky says, flopping down on the couch with dramatic flourish. “Can’t believe she got them before I did.”

“Who’s Martens supposed to be?” Neil asks.

“Look at her shoes, Mr. Josten!”

“Oh,” Neil says, “is that what they’re called.”

“Andrew,” Nicky says, pushing himself up to his knees as he peers at Andrew from over the back of the couch, “can we go to the mall tonight? Black Friday sales have already started.”

“No,” Andrew replies.

“If we go tonight, we won’t have to go tomorrow,” Nicky tries, “and there’s usually less people too.”

Andrew pretends not to hear him as he walks over to take a seat on the beanbag chair.

“Andrew, please?”

“Nicky,” Andrew warns, “you know I don’t like that word.”

“Aaron can take him,” Neil chips in.

Andrew slides his gaze over to him.

“I’m doing what now?” Aaron demands.

“It’ll be a nice way for you to spend more time with Nicky,” Neil says, waving a hand around. “Nicky gets to go shopping, and Andrew doesn’t have to go anywhere. Everyone wins.”

Nicky swivels his attention from Andrew to Aaron, eyes wide and beseeching.

Aaron rubs his fingers over his temple and sighs.

“Alright,” he mutters.

Nicky whoops. 

Aaron scowls at Neil as he and Nicky don their jackets and scarves.

“I don’t like him,” he grumbles when he passes Andrew on the way out.

“A tear for your discomfort,” Andrew says placidly.

At Neil, Aaron says, “What will you two be up to, now that you’ve thrown me and Nicky out?”

Neil smirks. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Ugh.” Aaron rolls his eyes and stomps away.

“Eleven o’clock, Nicholas,” Andrew says as Nicky follows Aaron out the door.

“I’ll be back by then,” Nicky promises. “Bye, Andrew, bye, Mr. Josten!”

Andrew closes the door and locks it. When he turns around, Neil is staring at him, leaning against the adjacent wall.

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Do whatever you want.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Andrew pins him with an unimpressed stare.

“Stay,” he says.

Neil’s lips curve into a diminutive smile.

“Okay.”

Andrew goes to the balcony to grab the ashtray and brings it to the kitchen. He heats up some milk on the stove to make hot cocoa while Neil tails him.

“Did you like the pie?” Neil asks, an annoying smirk on his face.

Andrew had two gigantic slices of it for dessert.

“If you were hoping for an ego boost, you will be sorely disappointed,” Andrew informs him.

“So you liked it, then,” Neil concludes.

“A little curious, Neil Josten,” Andrew says, “why would a man who dislikes sweets make a hobby of making sweets?”

Neil shrugs. “It’s kind of relaxing.”

Andrew makes a grunt of acknowledgment. He takes out two mugs, but Neil shakes his head no, so Andrew only makes one for himself.

He’s smoked three cigarettes by the time they settle on the sofa. When he lights up a fourth, Neil steals it from him, taking a single, long drag from the stick before he stubs it out on the ashtray.

“You shouldn’t be smoking so much,” he says.

“Worried that I will die too soon?” Andrew says, sardonic.

Neil stares at him with a too-solemn gaze that is more forthright than any words could be. Andrew’s throat clogs up with the same fear that wells up in him whenever Neil stares at him like that, but Neil looks away before Andrew does.

“Nicky is almost convinced that you’ve quit smoking because he never sees you do it in front of him,” Neil says instead. “I don’t know if I should remind him that you probably don’t smoke at home or when he’s around because he’s asthmatic.”

“Like I have told you before,” Andrew says in a bored tone, “you should stop assuming that I do things out of the goodness of my heart.”

Neil rolls his eyes. “Right. You’re such a mean, tough guy. Children cower before you.”

“I should hope they do.”

Neil lets out a tinkle of a laugh, light and breathy. Quiet satisfaction blooms through Andrew’s chest.

“Can you show me your book collection?” Neil asks.

“It is right there in front of you,” Andrew says, nudging a chin towards the wall shelf next to the entertainment center, leaden with books.

“But you have more, don’t you?”

Andrew regards him for a long moment.

“There’s no Jane Austen here,” Neil elaborates.

Huh, Andrew thinks. He hasn’t expected Neil to remember that bit about him, or for him to pay so much attention. But then again, it would be more peculiar if Neil didn’t pick up on the details after living the kind of life that he did.

That is how Andrew finds himself inviting Neil into his bedroom to show him the bookshelf he’s installed next to his closet, lined from one end to the other with his favorite titles.

Andrew cracks the window open a little as Neil runs careful fingers over the rows of book spines, expression reverent. He’s in a navy blue sweater, a peach-colored dress shirt underneath it, and a black pair of jeans that hugs his lower half in all the right places. Neil is attractive – always has been, scars and all, but there is something in his parted plump lips and the wonder in his glacial eyes tonight that makes it impossible for Andrew to rip his gaze away.     

Neil extracts one book and flips through the dog-eared pages. “I’ve read this one before.”

 _The Graveyard Book_. Andrew first read it when he was in college, alone on the rooftop of their dorm, sunlight spilling over the pages.

“Why don’t _you_ wear your glasses?” Neil suddenly asks. “Aaron wears his.”

“I do not need them.”

Neil levels him an unamused stare.

“I do not need them most of the time,” Andrew amends, sending Neil an equally unamused stare.

“Sure,” Neil says, wry. “You might be far-sighted and all, but you shouldn’t force yourself to go without them when you’re reading and stuff.”

Andrew doesn’t respond. An eyebrow arched, Neil says, “What, you think I haven’t noticed?”

He puts the book back in its place and moves closer to Andrew, lower lip caught between his teeth.

He tucks a tress of hair behind his ear - he is wearing his helix earring this time - and quietly says, “Thanks for today.”

“I don't see why you are thanking me,” Andrew says, wondering if Neil’s hair is as soft as it looks. “You did not seem too happy about it when we first made the deal.”

Neil seems to consider Andrew’s words. Slowly, he reaches out a hand, hooking a finger into one of the belt loops on Andrew’s jeans.

“I was just trying to not make it too obvious that I like spending time with you.”

Andrew’s chest is a tempest, his emotions writhing and revolting like they often do when he’s with Neil.

“You shouldn’t say such stupid things,” he manages to say.

Neil ducks his head a little closer without moving his gaze from Andrew’s. “Even though they’re true?”

“You are a liar,” Andrew reminds him. “Why start telling truths now?”

“Because I don’t want to lie to you,” Neil says softly, a feather in the breeze. “Not anymore.”

“Stop looking at me like that,” Andrew says, vulnerable like a prayer.

“You first.”

Andrew leans forward, closes his eyes, and kisses Neil.

In the distance, car horns blare and rip through the night. A tire squeals, and a dog barks.

In Andrew’s head, it is quiet.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The toughest decision I’ve made this year was whether I want to make them kiss in this chapter or not. This chapter also took ages to write and edit because over the past month, I've graduated, travelled, gotten rejected for 3 lab positions but accepted for 2 other spots, so it's been a little crazy.
> 
> Also, the hallway scene in the middle of the night is the first scene that I came up with for this fic. It finally made its debut! Hurrah! 
> 
> Also also, when I had “””camp””” nights at school (they’re like character-building programs – I was part of the disciplinary committee for most of my school career) we usually had to sleep in classrooms (they made us rearrange the tables and chairs) and shower in restrooms because there were no locker rooms with shower stalls and it was fucking horrible. But somebody usually found a garden hose and sprayed the rest of us with water so that was kinda fun. 
> 
> Also also also, I know most schools usually have spring productions only but luckily for me I didn’t go to an American high school so I can blame it on ignorance when I write that this school has 2 productions a year. Like I noted in the first chapter, I am well aware that this is all unrealistic.
> 
> Special shoutout to the ghosts with butts groupchat for coming up with ideas of what sports the twins would play if Exy doesn't exist. I went with the most boring option, but eh. Extra special shoutout to everybody who has been super supportive via kudos and comments and asks on tumblr - I probably would have abandoned this fic a couple of chapters ago if it weren't for all of you, so thank you <3
> 
> This has gotten really long but I haven’t been around for a while so I got too excited. Let me know what you think of this chapter! :)
> 
> my [tumblr ](http://nakasomethingkun.tumblr.com)


	6. come home to my heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Threats are once again made. Christmas gifts are exchanged. Phone bills are accrued. Questions are asked and answers are given. There is a cat and an epilogue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs: Referenced/implied rape/non-con, descriptions of scars, referenced/implied self-harm, off-screen panic attack, mental health issues, disassociation 
> 
> Please don't hesitate to let me know if there's anything else I need to add. And English isn't my first language, so feel free to correct me on any mistakes you see.
> 
> Title of chapter is from Lorde's “Supercut” Y E E T

Wymack lets him get away with having only one advisory period per week because nobody ever really comes in to see him. Robin does, sometimes, but on most days, Andrew spends his break on the roof, with the smell of tobacco to keep him company. He eats his sandwich, reads a page or two from a novel or anthology, stares out into the parking lot and soccer field, contemplates if a three-story drop would kill him.

Today, he puts on his headphones and watches his feet dangle over the lip of the roof. This used to send his heart racing, vertigo a noose around his neck, fear gripping his muscles. Nowadays, he notices that he’s been getting his adrenaline fix from a different source.

It’s a half-day; classes only run until lunch period to make way for the drama club’s opening night, and the students are all encouraged to attend and give support. There will be a few shows in the next few days, and then all that’s left for the year are finals week and winter break.

Andrew feels rather than hears Neil’s approaching footsteps; there is a change in the air whenever Neil is around, one that Andrew can’t quite describe. He sits next to him, far enough so that they’re not in each other’s personal space, but close enough so that they can share each other’s warmth.

Warm. That might be it. The air feels warm whenever Neil is around.

He feels Neil’s gaze on his face, and he lets the current song finish before he slides the headphones off and holds them near Neil’s head.

Neil blinks in surprise, but nods. Andrew makes sure they’re snug over Neil’s ears and studies his face as the song progresses – the flutter of his eyelashes, the small frown of concentration, the slightly parted lips, the way he meets Andrew’s eyes for a brief moment before looking away.

“Who’s the singer?” he asks, a few octaves too loud. Andrew can’t really blame him; he’s wearing the noise-cancelling headphones Renee got for Andrew last Christmas. He doesn’t listen to a lot of music; having the sort of memory he has means that songs tend to play on a loop in his head and he finds it irretrievably annoying. But having a tune filling his ears is preferable to having voices from his past trussed up inside his head like cotton.

Andrew holds a finger up for Neil to wait until the song ends. He checks his iPod and presses pause right before the next one begins.

Neil pulls the headphones off, holding them in his hands on his lap and looking expectantly at Andrew. “Well?”   

Andrew’s gaze travels to the auburn cowlick that’s reaching skyward like the ruddy tongue of flames, a product of the contact between Neil’s hair and the headphone band.

“The Neighbourhood.”

Neil chews on his lower lip in thought. “I think I’ve heard some of their songs before. There’s that one about the holed sweater.”

“Sweater Weather,” imparts Andrew, ever generous with his wisdom.

“And this one is?”

Andrew drops his gaze on Neil’s fingers, lithe and fair, connected to knobby, worn down knuckles that are more scars than skin.

Three weeks ago, he had kissed Neil. And Neil had kissed him back.

After he had drawn back, hands incurvated around Neil’s face like he wanted to imprint the shape and feel into his skin, he had said in a hoarse whisper, “Tell me no.”

Neil’s eyes had waved open, slowly, like he was caught in a daze. With kiss-swollen lips, he had murmured, “But it’s a yes.”

Andrew had dropped his hands, but had let Neil keep his finger around his belt loop. “This is not something that you want.”

“Oh, fantastic,” Neil had said dryly, extracting himself out of Andrew’s bubble. Andrew had fought against the impulse to wheel him back in, to gather his warmth into his ribs; greed was like a slip-knot that pulled more and more tightly around his lungs.

“So now you know what I want, is that it? Don’t I get a say in deciding what I want and what I don’t?”

Andrew had kept quiet, waiting for the heat in his neck to sizzle away, for the thrum of his heart to fade into silence.

Neil must have seen something on his face, because the sharpness etched into his features, a sign of his nascent anger, had whittled away to be replaced by tender honesty. Andrew had to force himself to look away.

“I don’t want to fight.”

“That is new.”

Neil hadn’t sniped back like Andrew had hoped he would; instead, he had said, “It’s okay if you don’t want it. Just know that it’s a yes for me.”

Andrew hadn’t said anything, but the matter had been effectively dropped. Neil had changed the subject and asked what Andrew’s favorite movie was, which had led them to spend a couple of hours afterwards to watch _Pride and Prejudice_ because Neil had never seen it. But Andrew could hardly concentrate on it, not when his lips still tingled from where they glided over Neil’s, not when the pads of his fingers still scorched from where they cradled Neil’s cheekbones, not when Neil was right there beside him.

Neil had been wrong. It’s not that Andrew doesn’t want it; he does. He wants and wants and _wants_ , so much that it suffocates him. He won’t deny it, not anymore, but there is still a sliver of fear, the nick of a blade against his skin, the old voice in his head that croons at him pitifully – _you can’t have this_ , it says, _you’ll just ruin it_ , it says, _just like how you’ve ruined everything else,_ it says, _he probably doesn’t even mean it_.

He is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When Neil sends him earnest, quiet half-smiles, he reminds himself that Neil once told him that he will only be here until spring. When they swap more truths, he speculates when Neil will finally come out and say it. When they exchange lingering looks from across the table during the morning meetings, he wonders if today will be the day. When they stroll side by side after dinner on Friday nights, he expects Neil to go, _oh, you were right. I don’t want this_.

But even when he’s telling Neil about how he orchestrated the car accident that resulted in the death of Aaron’s abusive mother or how he was exiled to a juvenile detention center by getting into a brawl that left three people half-dead, Neil barely bats an eye. Andrew supposes that it isn’t surprising, given that Neil has lived a life rife with violence, his sense of morality skewed.

The recurring cycle is this: the more Neil understands him, the more Neil sees him, the more Andrew hates him, the more Andrew wants him.

But he is still waiting.

After all, life is all about the things that you want but can never have. It’s why he has stopped wanting a long time ago.

“Andrew?”

His gaze flits back up to Neil’s face, and he clinically says, “The others are betting on your sexuality.”

Neil tilts his head to the side, brows scrunched together. “They are?”

“Renee says that they are undecided.”

“I’m surprised Allison hasn’t told them.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t swing,” Neil says easily. When Andrew continues to stare at him, unmoving, he gives a light shrug. “She asked about it once, and I told her the truth.”

He doesn’t swing. Andrew brings forward all the memories he has of interactions he’s seen between Neil and other people and inspects them one by one, trying to see if there has been any indication that Neil has shown a semblance attraction to somebody, to see if Neil means what he is saying.

“If they’re thrown off by the way I act around the parents sometimes, they should know by now that I’m just trying to be nice. Wymack is probably going to behead me if I punch somebody’s dad again.”

Andrew’s mind conjures up all the instances he’s shared with Neil instead, all the latent meaning behind Neil’s words and actions, all the sharp barbs and vulnerable admissions and private smiles, and a different question festers in the crevices of his mind.

He inhales in calculated increments, and finds it in him to say, “When you smile at me, or flirt with me, are you also doing it with the intent of being nice?”

His voice is as dead as it always is, but he fears that his face is encrusted with something more blatant, something that would expose his guts for Neil to see, so he fixes his eyes on a point across the parking lot and soccer field, body turned towards the edge of the roof.

“You know that’s not it,” Neil says. In his periphery, Andrew sees him move a little closer.

“I don’t swing,” Neil repeats, a bit more slowly this time, like he isn’t quite sure how to string the words together, “but…”

“But what,” Andrew prompts, unable to hide his curiosity and apprehension.

“I do know that I’m interested in you,” Neil finishes, firm and confident, far from any doubt.

Emotions flood into Andrew’s chest like water rapids, and it is too much. Neil is warm, and he is _too much_.

Andrew gets to his feet and heads for the door, casual enough to make it seem like he isn’t internally collapsing. His iPod clatters next to Neil’s thigh on the concrete.

Neil looks confused, but not bewildered enough that he’s about to follow Andrew.

“What about your –”

“Consider them a loan,” Andrew says without looking at Neil. The sound of his accelerating heartbeat is deafening.

“I’ll see you later,” Neil calls out to him as he wrenches the rooftop door open and descends the stairs.

Andrew doesn’t stop until he’s reached a more secluded part of the building where the utility rooms are. He has a brief moment of reprieve before a figure approaches him.

Who he sees has him completely reverted to his state of detached calm.

Maya Lothfi, the woman that escorted him out of Neil’s apartment the night he broke in, stops a little away from him, her posture relaxed but confident. She exudes the kind of danger that a serpent does when it’s asleep; it will stay non-threatening as long as you don’t poke it with a stick and disturb its peaceful slumber.

“Mr. Minyard,” she greets with a curt nod.

“Ms. Lothfi,” he acknowledges.

“There is someone who wants to see you,” she says without preface. “If you would come with me.”

Andrew gazes at her critically, but her face gives nothing away, and his mind cycles through a series of questions and scenarios. She can’t possibly expect Andrew to comply that easily.

After a long moment, he says, “Does Neil know?”

“He doesn’t,” she answers, her tone perpetually utilitarian, “but he will.”

Andrew mulls this over. There is no reason to trust this woman, but Andrew – he trusts Neil. It is a realization that leaves him disoriented for a second, but he efficiently folds it away to be scrutinized at a later time.

“Alright,” he says, and Lothfi accepts this with another nod before she turns on her heels and leads the way.

Andrew silently wishes that he hadn’t listened to Wymack all those years ago about stripping his armbands of his knives when he is at work; they would probably come in handy in this type of situation. But it’s not like anybody could have foreseen that a staff member would be apprehended by a crime family’s stooge on school grounds in broad daylight, so Andrew decides not to begrudge Wymack on it.

Lothfi brings him outside the school gates, where the black Audi that transports Neil around is idling by the curb.

Andrew goes into the backseat when Lothfi opens the door for him. Looking over his shoulder to glare at Andrew from the driver’s seat is none other than Phil, the bulky man who, from what Andrew has seen and heard, seems to be extremely dedicated to Neil.

Slinking into the passenger seat, Lothfi snaps her finger at her companion.

“Play nice, Phillip.”

“Who said I wasn’t?” he protests. “I’m not shooting him, am I?”

“True.”

Phil sets the transmission gear into drive and the car lurches onto the road.

The drive is quiet, and from what Andrew can tell, they’re heading towards the upper west side of the city, which is a place where modesty goes to die and the elites thrive.

“I don’t like this,” Phil complains quietly. “Going behind the little boss’s back and shit.”

“We are not doing things behind his back,” Lothfi counters, as cool as a cucumber. “Cameron will tell him about it. Eventually.”

Phil doesn’t look appeased at all, but he keeps mum and pulls over on the side of the street.

Lothfi gets out and opens the door for Andrew again. He slips out and scans his surroundings; they’re outside a high-end bar, and parked in front of the Audi is a black Lamborghini Urus.

Andrew has never seen an actual Lamborghini this close before. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt this pissed off before either; these folks are testing the limits of his patience with their ostentatious flaunting of wealth. Neil, however, would probably call him out on his hypocrisy.

The two of them escort Andrew into the establishment where a couple of other men in suits are straggling at the bar. They look up at the trio’s entrance; while their faces betray nothing, their body language tells Andrew that they are ready, at any moment, to handle any hostile presence.

When Lothfi and Phil pass by though, they crack toothy grins and hold their hands out for fist bumps. Their eyes continue to track Andrew’s every movement after the greetings are done, and the absence of his knives is starting to give Andrew physical pain. 

“Young boss in the back?” Phil asks one of them.

“Yeah,” the first man answers in a thick British accent, “been getting impatient waiting for the lot of ya.”

“I don’t want to deal with him when he’s like that,” Phil says, grimacing.

“Wuss,” Lothfi says, and the two men chuckle.

“Only you can put up with him in his current mood, Maya,” says the second man.

“That’s because she has balls of steel, unlike you three,” a lumbering figure behind the bar interjects. He must have come in from a backroom somewhere, and unlike the others, he is dressed more casually, in a flannel shirt with his sleeves rolled up to display the lotus flowers on his forearms.  

“I’ll drink to that, mate,” the first one says, holding up a glass pint of beer.

“Come with me,” Lothfi instructs Andrew.

Phil joins in with the rest of them, where they launch into a different conversation.

“How did the little boss react to the new ride?”

“Not so well,” Phil professes. “He threw a fit last week when he saw it. Hadn’t even let me use it, let alone drive it himself.”

His companion thumps him on the back, wincing in sympathy. “He’ll get used to it. He should know by now how the big boss likes to throw gifts at him.”

Phil sighs. “That only makes him angrier. You know how he is.”

“But since he wants to stay here longer than he originally planned…”

Their voices grow faint as Andrew is led into a different room. It’s a little fancier than the main area, the ceiling carved with intricate moldings, but it’s also more comfortable and much quieter. Classical music floats through from somewhere, and Andrew is brought to an alcove-like booth where a man around his age is seated. With his dark blonde hair glossed back and his svelte stature covered in a sharp, well-tailored suit, the man makes it unequivocally clear that he is at the top of the food chain.

His deep green eyes remain on the iPad he has in his elegant hands when Andrew, as asked by Lothfi, takes a seat across the table from him.

“Cameron,” Lothfi says after a beat of silence.

This elicits a simple hum, and the man – Cameron, as he is evidently called – puts down the device and slings a smile Lothfi’s way.

“Maya,” he says, voice velvety, “I’m so pleased to see you.”

“I’m sure you are,” she replies, expression undented. “I have brought you your guest.”

“Ah, yes,” he says, finally looking at Andrew. The smile he has on his face would have passed as genuine if Andrew wasn’t the jaded person that he is, attuned to the insincerity of others.

“Andrew Minyard.” He turns to Lothfi again. “Thank you, Maya.”

She nods in acknowledgment, then leaves the room. The man from behind the bar enters next, ferrying a tray that bears an unopened Macallan and two snifter glasses, which he sets on the table.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he says, addressing Cameron, which – is not what Andrew expected.

Cameron dismisses this with a flick of his fingers. When they are left alone again, Cameron opens the bottle of scotch and pours some in both glasses, pushing one towards Andrew.

“Help yourself,” he says, still smiling.

Andrew doesn’t touch the drink, watching as Cameron takes a small sip from his own glass. The diamond studs he has at the root of his ear helixes glitter with every move he makes.

“Andrew – oh, I hope you don’t mind me calling you that,” he says.

Andrew doesn’t respond. Cameron takes it all in stride, fake smile unwavering. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

This purposeful arrogance and geniality, veiling a more sinister persona, reminds Andrew a lot of –

Cameron places his glass on the table with a clink. “Do you know who I am?”

Andrew doesn’t tear his gaze away from Cameron – he hasn’t done so ever since he entered the room. “I assume you are about to enlighten me.”

Cameron’s smile turns thin. “You assume correctly.” He rests an arm over the arm of his seat and sweeps his other hand out in an expansive gesture. “My name is Cameron Hatford, and I am related to someone you know – Neil Josten.”

Things slide and click into place. After a long minute, Andrew simply says, “You are his cousin.”

This time, Cameron’s smile widens. “I am. You’re a smart one, aren’t you?”

Andrew doesn’t react to any of his words. He is having a rather hard time reconciling the image of the bubbly cousin who names a cat King Fluffkins with this manicured, sophisticated caricature of a young mob boss.

“Has he ever told you anything about me?” Cameron asks, head cocked to the side in mock curiosity.

With a straight face, Andrew says, “You named his cat.”

Cameron’s expression freezes like he wasn’t expecting that, and then he bursts out laughing. Andrew is a little taken aback by the fact that the laughter is genuine.

“Indeed I did,” he says, shoulders still shaking with laughter. “Anything else?”

“Nothing else.”

Cameron hums, drinking some of his pricey scotch.

“Do you have an inking as to why I wanted to meet you?”

“I don’t think it is to make friendship bracelets.”

At this, Cameron smiles again. “I can see why he likes you.”

Andrew fights to keep his expression disinterested.

“You see, Andrew, I have eyes and ears everywhere,” Cameron says affably, “and it’s come to my attention that Abram – Neil – has perhaps become a little attached to his current errand.” He shrugs before continuing. “It’s not that unexpected. He has never been one to half-arse anything, after all.”

Tracing his index finger around the rim of his glass, Cameron proceeds with his spiel. “His attachment is the main reason I am here.”

Oh, Andrew thinks distantly, this is where the other shoe drops.

“The thing about my cousin is that he never stays,” Cameron says in his plummy accent. “He’ll come home for a few weeks – three months tops, and then he’ll go somewhere else for a while, maybe for a few months, maybe a year. He says that he feels uneasy if he stays in one place for too long, something that I have my aunt to thank for, I think.” Cameron’s smile takes a sharper turn; he clearly doesn’t like Neil’s mother.

“So as you can imagine, it alarmed me when he told me that he might want to stay here for longer than he originally intended.”

Andrew remains expressionless, but his heart skips a few beats, his chest pumping.

Neil wants to stay.

Cameron stops speaking right then, looking at Andrew like he’s waiting for a reply, like he knows that Andrew understands what he is actually saying.

Andrew flips through the filing cabinet of facts and stories Neil has given him and finds one that he can use.

“He does not do what you do.”

A few months ago, when Andrew had guessed that Neil was part of the mafia, Neil had dodged the accusation but had also clarified that it isn’t his actual profession.

The way that Cameron is smiling at Andrew right now tells him that Neil hadn’t been lying when he said it.

“He doesn’t,” Cameron confirms. “It’s quite a shame, really. The two of us would have made a formidable team.” He waves a hand around. “My mother and our uncle sometimes give him tasks to do, and he doesn’t mind helping the family out every now and then, but I would rather not have him too heavily embroiled in our business. My mother has a hard time letting him go as it is.”

“Then him staying here should not be a problem for you,” Andrew intones, choosing his words prudently, “if he isn’t formally affiliated with the family business like you say.”

“Not for me, no,” Cameron says, “but it might be for him. I don’t think he is thinking this through properly.”

“He is not a child,” Andrew states.

Cameron’s artificial smile dissipates as he releases a small sigh, turning his head slightly towards the windows. Irradiated by the sunlight, his eyes glint with a brighter shade of green.

“No, he isn’t.” He looks at Andrew again. “But he is family.”

A steely exterior frosts over Cameron when he says his next words, the glass-bead chill of his pupils impenetrable.

“I don’t mind it, if he wants to stay here, as long as it is safe for him. What I will not forgive is if any harm is ever inflicted on him, and I’m not simply referring to physical harm. If he is hurt, in any way at all, it will be the end of you, and I will see to it personally. Am I making myself clear, Andrew?”

Andrew gives him an equally glacial and remote stare. “Crystal.”

“Good.” He suddenly snaps his fingers, the sound like the crack of whip. “I know all of you are eavesdropping.”

There are whispers and a voice going, “Told you he knows,” before Lothfi emerges from the other room.

“Honestly, _sayang_?” Cameron asks her with a quirked eyebrow.

“We had a bet going,” she says, stoic, as if it answers everything.

“Are we finished here?” Andrew says blandly, done with this whole situation.

Cameron finishes his drink and shoos Andrew away like he’s a fly. “You may leave.”

The men are pretending that they weren’t listening in on Andrew and Cameron, whistling and chatting loudly at the bar. When he and Lothfi walk out, they all flash too-innocent grins at Lothfi.

“Looks like it went well, since he’s still in one piece,” one of them says with a pointed look at Andrew.

Andrew thinks that these people are severely underestimating him, but he doesn’t bother opening his mouth to contradict them; he wants to avoid communicating with them if he can.

“Mm-hmm,” Lothfi responds. To Phil, she says, “Let’s go.”

“Alright,” he says.

The others bid Lothfi and Phil a rowdy farewell, and the duo ushers Andrew back to the car.

As he slides into the backseat, the ludicrousness of it all hits him.

The fact that he was threatened by a mob boss and the implication that Neil might remain here are equally surreal, and they tickle against his throat, begging to be released as hysteria-driven laughter. He roughly swallows the unsettling impulse, noticing how Phil periodically glances at him from the rearview mirror.

“Why is he the little boss?” he asks apathetically.

“Why else? Because he’s travel-size, of course,” Phil replies, which isn’t exactly the answer Andrew was angling for.

“But deadly,” Lothfi adds.

“But deadly,” Phil agrees fondly. “In my esteemed opinion, young boss didn’t have to give you the ‘break his heart and I’ll break your face’ talk. Little boss would’ve done a mighty fine job of doing it himself.”

“Cameron likes to fool himself into thinking that Abram is still a child who needs to be coddled.” After a thoughtful pause, Lothfi tacks on a, “So do you.”

“I’ve known him since he was a wee baby, when the whole family came over for his baptism,” Phil argues in his defense.

“Yes, you’ve only told me this eight hundred times, but continue.”

Andrew closes his eyes and lolls his head back against the headrest, tuning their bickering out. He doesn’t want to think about any of it until he has to.

*

Neil blows a gasket when he hears about what happened that afternoon.

This is how it happens: After being dropped off at the front gate, Andrew makes his way to the auditorium, where the drama club members are hustling about in preparation for their first play of the semester, Neil caught up amidst them. They don’t really have the time or space to talk, especially not when Andrew is also roped into the hubbub by a worked-up Nicky, whose cold feet is pulling him towards the edge of a nervous breakdown.

At six o’clock, when the audience has settled in and everyone is in their costumes and positions, the houselights are shut off and the curtains are raised. Andrew manages to wander close enough to Neil, who is seemingly engrossed by the performance from where he stands at the wings.

“I thought you weren’t going to come,” Neil mumbles, thumb on his bottom lip and eyes on the act on stage.

It’s hard to make out his expression since Andrew is looking at the side of his face that sports the burn scars. Tonelessly, Andrew says, “Such little faith.”

“You _did_ suddenly leave me alone on the roof,” Neil returns, and Andrew forces himself to drag his gaze away.

They don’t speak again until after the actors have given their bows to the applause of the audience and after the students have finished raving about the success of their opening night. They free Neil from their burble of adrenaline as they head off for their impromptu cast party at the fast food stand across the street.

The auditorium is emptied out and the stage lights are switched off. The janitor comes in to sweep the floor, whistling a merry tune as he works through the rows. Backstage, Andrew is finally left alone with Neil.

Before Andrew can get two words in to answer the unspoken question in Neil’s eyes, however, Neil’s phone buzzes and he excuses himself to answer the call, expression turning inscrutable when he sees who the dialer is.

Neil’s explosion of “ _What_ ” rings lethal and clear as it bounces off the walls of the empty dressing room. When Andrew peers inside, Neil is pacing the length of the room, a slew of curses flying out of his mouth. Andrew can’t be too sure - he makes out at least four different languages, and the only clue he’s given is how angry the words sound. What follows the convoluted string of curses is a litany of furious, rapid French, and Andrew leans against the door frame as Neil continues his endeavor to carve a trench line across the old carpet with his relentless pacing.

The phone call doesn’t last as long as Andrew expected, but Neil keeps on marching back and forth even after he shoves his phone into his pocket. As captivating as Neil looks with anger flushing his cheeks and igniting his eyes into an electric blue, Andrew doesn’t have all night. Nicky will come looking for him any moment.

With a hand on Neil’s elbow, Andrew says, “You are going to shred the carpet into pieces.”

Neil snaps his eyes to Andrew, glancing wildly all over his face and body. “Did they touch you?”

Andrew is quiet for a few beats, taken aback by the question and trying not to show it.

“They didn’t,” he answers slowly. “I would not have let them.”

Neil visibly relaxes a little, and Andrew steers him towards one of the chairs in front of the vanity mirrors. Seeing someone get upset on his behalf is new and strange, but it’s also...touching. He’s not quite sure what to make of it yet.

Neil scrubs a hand down his face, breathing out a ragged sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” Andrew asks, leaning against the dresser.

Looking at Andrew with doleful eyes, Neil says, “I never wanted to bring you into my family matter. My cousin - any of them - they’re not supposed to ever bother you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“That’s not the point,” Neil snaps.

“Then what is the point, Neil? You should have expected this when you decided to take on Reynold’s request.”

A mix of anger and frustration has Neil releasing a breath through gritted teeth. He looks off to the side, the stubborn jut of his chin making it look like he’s sulking.

Andrew sits on the chair beside Neil. “Tell me.”

Surprise overrides other emotions on Neil’s face as he stares at Andrew. “You want to know?”

“Only what you are willing to share.”

“But -” Neil’s eyebrows draw together. “Doesn’t it - bother you? That I come from a crime family? That a gangster literally threatened you a few hours ago?”

“Neil,” Andrew says collectedly, “you pointed a gun to my head and committed patricide. I think I am capable of handling the fact that your family runs a criminal empire.”

Neil glowers at him, but his lips twitch with the prelude of a smile. He smothers it down, twisting his fingers together and twiddling his thumbs, but he holds Andrew’s eyes.

“Cameron will be the head of the family soon, and his mom - Aunt Cecile - has always wanted me to be his right hand. She’s currently in charge, and she has her younger brother as second in command.”

Neil shrugs. “I help them out if they ask me to - balancing books, a few translation work here and there, visits to some of the businesses we own - simple things like that. Cameron says I don’t have to, but…”

Andrew scrutinizes him. “You feel indebted to them,” he infers.

“I don’t,” Neil denies immediately. Then he bites his lips, looking a little distraught. “I guess I do feel like I owe them something,” he admits quietly. “How could I not? They took me in, paid for my education, taught me how to protect myself and fight back. I feel like this is the least I could do for them.”

Andrew wonders how Neil’s mother factors into all this. Neil has only mentioned her when he’s talking about his time on the run; Andrew’s best guess is that she is dead, but he won’t make a point of asking if Neil doesn’t want to talk about it.

He tips his head to the side in thought, disassembling the conversation he had with Cameron and rifling through the pieces. “They are not forcing you to stay with them.”

“They’re not, but I know that they want me to.”

 _But you want to stay here_ , Andrew doesn’t ask, jaw clamped around the words.

“I -” Neil grips the hem of his sweater, knuckles white, his eyes downcast. “I don’t have anybody chasing me down anymore, but it’s still a bit hard for me to remain in one place for too long, even if I do want to stay. I find excuses to travel around, and my family lets me. They know what I’ve been through - they know that tying me down won’t be any good.”

“Among all the places you have lived in,” Andrew says, all false composure, “have you ever wanted to stay?”

Neil doesn’t answer for a while. There is the ghost of forlorn longing on his features when he does speak, like he’s looking at an age-bitten photograph. “A couple of times, the thought’s crossed my mind. I think about the cafe down the block that I visit when I can’t sleep at night, about the streets that I walk on every day, about the view from my bedroom window, and I think, ‘Staying here would be nice.’ I think about how I’m not a runaway anymore, how I can live wherever I want.”

“Nowadays,” he continues, “when I arrive in a different city, in a different country, I try to find excuses to stay instead of to leave. It’s one of the reasons why I got myself a cat.” A rueful half-smile touches his lips. “I thought it would make me want to move less, since I have something else other than myself to think about.”   

“Has it worked?” Andrew asks, trying to keep his hands from shaking.

Neil meets his eyes again. He looks at Andrew for a long, long moment. “I’d like to think it has,” he says softly.

They both start when Nicky pops in and announces that Andrew needs to take him home _pronto because Grey’s Anatomy is gonna start soon!_

As Andrew grapples to process everything he just heard, Neil cloaks easygoing poise over his vulnerability as swiftly as a gliding stream and tells Nicky that Andrew was just about to leave and find him.

They walk to the Maserati together, Nicky recounting the latest season of _Grey’s Anatomy._ When Neil is about to part ways with them, Andrew brushes his fingers over Neil’s arm, acting on impulse more than anything. He doesn’t open his mouth, his jaw creaking against the hoop of _don’t go don’t go don’t go_ latched around his tongue.

The tepidness in Neil’s eyes makes him appear wrung-out, and his voice is unbearably quiet when he says, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Andrew.”

The razor-sharp focus Andrew affords his surroundings fizzles and thrashes, folding in on Neil and disrupting his pillar of logic and patience, making him try to discern if there is a lie when he knows there is none. He manages a rigid nod, his irrational thoughts lodged like a fist in his mouth.

Neil casts him a tired half-smile and turns to leave.

It haunts him for a while, Neil’s retreating back, his own weakness, the possibility that he might not know how to go back from this.

*

On the last day of the semester, the teachers and staff members gather in the teacher’s lounge after school for the annual Christmas party, which is less of a celebration of the holiday and more of an excuse to coordinate a Secret Santa-style gift exchange. Andrew has never participated in it – he’s the only one who never has – but he is making an exception this year. When Renee and Altherr assigned everybody a recipient two weeks ago, he didn’t even open up the folded piece of paper that bore his recipient’s name. He had already told Renee to rig the game beforehand in exchange for a few hours of volunteer work.

All the gifts sit under the miniature Christmas tree that Ortiz and Abby set up in the corner of the lounge in the beginning of December. Andrew spends some time listening to Bee talk about her potted plants at home and watching Neil get accosted by Knox and Alvarez on the other side of the room before Altherr finally announces that she and Renee will be distributing the presents. The white package tagged with Neil’s name is among the first ones to be handed out, and Andrew brings his plastic cup of punch to his lips without taking a sip, eyes riveted on Neil.

Neil slits the tapes off with a swipe of his fingers and pries the flap open, peering inside with his brows wrinkled together a little in consternation. He sticks a hand inside the package, pulls out a wad of black fabric, and, upon realizing what it is, lifts his gaze to meet Andrew’s from across the room, an arrow to its target. He has an eyebrow quirked, as if to say _really?_

Andrew gives him an unaffected look, as if to say _yes, really_.

When Altherr calls Andrew’s name out, Neil continues to watch him. Renee passes him his gift with a sweet, knowing smile. It’s a heavy box in simple blue wrapping, and Andrew puts his drink aside and places the box on a table so that he can open it easier.

A leather-bound hardcover collection of all of Jane Austen’s works, something that’s way above the budget limit that was set for the exchange. His eyes dart back to Neil, who doesn’t bother hiding his tiny, pleased smile.

Looks like he isn’t the only one who’s cheated the system.

Placing the lid back over the box, Andrew tilts his head towards the door. At Neil’s nod, he lugs his gift under an arm, pressing it against his hip, and makes his leave from the lounge.

The hallways are deserted; most of the students have gone home, and those that haven’t prefer killing time in the courtyard or the library. He and Neil walk side by side towards the auditorium, their shoes clicking against the polished concrete floors. In the auditorium, they climb up the stage and sit at the edge, facing the rows and rows of vacant seats.

Andrew stuffs a hand into the pocket of his pants and fiddles with the small box that’s stowed inside it while Neil extracts the armbands from their package and slips them on after rolling the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows.  

“Comfy,” he says, looking at Andrew in the way that sparks a riot in his chest.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what, exactly?”                                                                                                         

At Neil’s playful expression, Andrew doles out a massively unimpressed stare.

“I hate you.”

“So you care about me enough to hate me, huh?” Neil says glibly, a smirk dancing around his mouth.

Andrew considers the option of never speaking to Neil ever again just so that he won’t have his own words used against him like how Neil is constantly doing. He doesn’t even know how Neil could remember the off-hand comment he made about not caring about his job enough to hate it; it was part of a conversation they had months ago.

When Andrew doesn’t say anything in return, Neil’s smirk melts into the wisp of a smile. “Nothing to say in your defense?”

“You are well acquainted with the fact that I am a terrible liar,” Andrew says, flat.

Inexplicably, Neil’s smile widens at this, the crinkles at the corner of his eyes deepening. “I am.”

Refusing to dwell on it further, Andrew fishes the box out of his pocket and shoves it into Neil’s hands. Slightly bewildered, Neil almost drops it onto his lap.

“What’s this?” he inquires.

Andrew doesn’t meet his eyes when he tells him to open it.

With a quizzical look still tinting his expression, Neil opens the box.

Andrew examines Neil’s face, how it morphs from mild surprise to profound, tender joy, like Andrew had just handed him all the stars in the galaxy. He pushes his hair back a little, plucks the hoop earring out of its case, and inserts it through the piercing on the helix of his ear with practiced ease.

“You need to clean it first,” Andrew says evenly, trying to not get distracted by how the small stone on the earring matches Neil’s eyes closely enough – he had silently agonized over finding something that could, in the slightest, parallel the impossible blueness of Neil’s eyes.

“I know,” Neil says. “I’ll take it off in a bit, but I just wanted to get your opinion on how it looks on me.”

He’s grinning openly now, and Andrew oscillates between satisfaction and annoyance – the former because Neil likes the gift, the latter because Neil shouldn’t be able to read him so easily like that.

“You look appalling,” he says, blasé.

“And what does that say about you,” Neil quips, “since you spend most of your time staring at me?”

“I do not.”

Neil tuts in mock admonishment. “Lies, lies, lies.”

Over the side of the stage, Andrew kicks Neil’s ankle, their knees knocking together.

Neil laughs, a light, sweet sound, like the tinkling of bells. 

After a while, his expression flickers, smile fading. He removes the earring and tucks it back into its casing.

“I’ll be going back to England for Christmas break,” he says, muted.

Andrew’s body goes cold even as his expression remains unaltered. He tangles a fist at the front of Neil’s shirt, giving it a tug.

“You will come back,” he says, not an order.

“You know I will.” 

“And after that?” Andrew asks, his heart trembling.

Close to a whisper, Neil says, “I’ll stay if you want me to.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Andrew says.

What he means is: _is that what you want?_

“I like it here, so I want to stay,” Neil says, a determined set to his eyes and mouth. He pauses right then, brows furrowed, lips quivering slightly. “But if you tell me to leave, I’ll go.”

Beneath Andrew’s palm, Neil’s chest feels like it’s cracked, torn open, the blood and bones transferring over to Andrew’s fingers.

Andrew slides his hand from Neil’s shirt to his neck, up to the side of his face. He tucks a lock of Neil’s hair behind his ear, and Neil lets him.

Once upon a time, Andrew hammered it into his own head that asking for something, wanting something, will only lead to disappointment and heartbreak, his hopes smashed into smithereens, until it feels like it would be better if he didn’t have a heart at all. But meeting Neil, being with Neil - it urges him into wanting, provokes him into climbing up his walls until he reaches the top, until he can dive headlong onto the other side.  

Meeting Neil’s gaze, he says, “I want you to stay.”

Neil’s eyes are a sky after a rainfall, quietly clearing away. He lifts a hand, slowly. “Can I…?”

Andrew says, “Yes.”

Neil lightly presses the tip of his fingers against Andrew’s chest, barely a graze, right over his beating heart. A shudder ripples down Andrew’s body.

Like an irrefutable truth, Neil says, “Then I’ll stay.”

*

On most days, Neil texts him, and he texts him back.

One day it is a blurry picture of his cousin’s cats, the next it is a crisp photo of his family’s vast, winter-ravaged garden. Other days, it is a simple _what are you thinking about?_

 _eggs_ , Andrew types out as he stands in the dairy section at the supermarket.

 _What about them?_ Neil replies.

 _they remind me of you_.

Andrew continuously taps the backspace button to erase the words. A lot of things remind him of Neil nowadays – pumpkins, emojis, cheesecakes, rooftops, cigarette smoke, shopping carts. Like an organism that has taken root within the earth, Neil’s existence has spread into every fissure of Andrew’s life.

On New Year’s day, Neil calls him while he’s in bed reading a book.

The line is completely silent, eerie like the dead of night. Almost a full minute has gone by before Andrew says, “Neil.”

There is a hitch of breath, almost too quiet to be heard. The silence finally shatters, but all Andrew can hear is the little hiccupping breaths that pour through the speaker.

The grip Andrew has on his phone feels like it could crack the device into pieces.

“Andrew?” Neil gasps out.

“Neil,” Andrew says, voice tight like the cranked-up strings on an instrument, “breathe.”

On the other side, it is quiet except for the sound of Neil’s irregular breathing, but it eventually dwindles down, until Andrew can hear the long gaps between one shaky exhale and the next. 

“Andrew,” Neil says in a rasp. He pauses, then repeats Andrew’s name, this time sounding mostly like his usual self.

Silence stretches out between them, across the skies, across the seas, and Andrew wants nothing more than to close that distance, the desire raging in his nerves.

“Neil,” Andrew says for a third time, just to be sure.

“I’m fine,” Neil bites out, sounding a little argumentative.

“I didn’t ask,” Andrew counters; he’s annoyed that Neil is lying.

Neil sighs, a crackle of static. “I didn’t realize that I was calling you.”

“Well, you were. You still are.” Andrew hauls the duvet off his legs, removes his reading glasses and places them on the nightstand, and moves to the bookshelf, staring at the book spines and waiting for Neil to reply. The fact that he is standing in the exact spot where he kissed Neil goes primly ignored.

“It seems I am,” Neil says, his voice still too quiet. “I had a…” After an extended pause, he clicks his tongue in frustration. “I can’t think of the word in English.”

“Nightmare,” Andrew guesses numbly.

There is a huff of scornful laughter. “Yeah,” Neil says, “that.”  

Andrew hums to let Neil know that he’s listening.

“Winters are – bad. It’s not –” His words are choppy, his voice faint, but Andrew is glad that he is speaking at all. “It’s not a good time for me. It was around this time when my father – it was around this time when I killed him.” He makes a noise akin to choked air; a brittle laugh, an attempt to inject some levity into his words. “It’s one of the reasons why my family makes me go home for the holidays every year.”

What a way to spend Christmas, Andrew thinks. Truth be told, winters aren’t a good time for him either. It was the time of the year when everybody in the family came home for the holidays, including the ones that crept into Andrew’s bed in the middle of the night.

“I don’t get nightmares as often as I used to, but sometimes –” Neil inhales and exhales, a shaky sound. “When I do, I almost forget that I’m supposed to be safe now.”

The image of a wired and exhausted Neil, shadows under his eyes, jumping at the slightest of sounds and hands flying to the weapon he hides on his person, surfaces in Andrew’s mind – he’s seen this version of Neil before.

The cobwebs of their past cling to them, even now, and Andrew wonders if fractured creatures like them will be burdened to hold their breaths for the rest of their lives.

When Neil falls quiet again, Andrew works the muscles in his jaw and says, “I do not have a lot of good memories associated with winter either.”

From the other end, there are rustling sounds like Neil is shifting around. Andrew imagines that he’s sitting up in bed and turning on the lights.

“What are some of the good ones that you have?” Neil asks, the passiveness gone from his tone, an obvious effort to nail the coffin shut on any nasty topics.

Andrew pads across the room to sit on the window sill. “In college, I spent a few Christmases with Bee.”

Aaron had hated Bee, so he had skulked off with his then-girlfriend-now-wife on multiple Christmas eves, thinking that he had been stealthy about it. Andrew had never confronted him about the rendezvouses, but that was only because he had never really talked to Aaron back then.

“Do – do you like her? Dobson, I mean,” Neil says. Andrew can see him chewing on his bottom lip as he asks this.

“I know _you_ don’t,” Andrew deflects in a monotone.  

“You really need to stop assuming that I dislike everybody at school,” Neil says drolly, probably referring to when Andrew accused him of disliking Renee. “I’m – neutral about her. I used to distrust people who work in that profession, but I had a therapist once, and she wasn’t all that bad, so I figured that my misgivings were maybe…a little unfair.”

Andrew pictures a flighty, younger Neil – belligerent, obstinate, wary; a feral cat that hisses and scratches at those that venture too close. It is not too different from how a teenage Andrew used to be. 

“How did someone manage to wrangle you into a psychiatrist’s office?” he asks, impassive.

“Not easily,” Neil says, probably with a little shrug. “Cam put his foot down though, and a part of me knew that it was for my own good, so I went in the end.”

Andrew replies with a small grunt of acknowledgment.

“Abby told me that she and Wymack invite people over to their place for Christmas, including Dobson and a few other teachers,” Neil goes on, a hint of amusement underlying his next words. “She said that you go every year. You come for the food and leave right afterwards.”

“Your point?”

Neil laughs, a gust of summer against Andrew’s ear. He closes his eyes and pretends that Neil is right there in the room with him, tucked close against his side so that their shoulders graze.  

“Did you and Nicky go this year?”

“We did,” Andrew answers, even though he is certain that Neil already knows. “And what about the man who is second in line for the Hatford throne? I assume your family throws lavish parties that commoners like me could never be invited to.”

“Does it ever get tiring,” Neil asks in a dry tone, “to be so hilarious?”

“It is a curse that I have to live with,” Andrew deadpans. 

“Aunt Cecile holds a party every year,” Neil answers, confirming Andrew’s conjecture. “It’s for our associates, for our family. It’s not too bad, not unless she and Uncle Stuart make me socialize.”

Andrew hums. He thinks that he could spend the rest of the night like this, eyes closed as he listens to the soft rumble of Neil’s voice.

“Go to sleep,” he tells Neil after he hears him yawn, his own voice dipping soft. It’s ten o’clock here, which means that it’s three in the morning where Neil is.

“It’s usually hard for me to go back to sleep after a nightmare,” Neil confesses. “Will you…will you stay with me for a while longer?”

Tipping his head back against the window pane, Andrew thinks about how his phone bill is going to skyrocket after this. He can’t bring himself to care.

“Yes,” he says.

Neil drones on after that in his strange, endearing accent with no distinguishable traces. He trips over a couple of words, rolling them together, his usually quick mouth a little slow and scrambled. But even when he’s sleepy and enervated, Neil doesn’t fail to hold Andrew’s attention.

“Andrew,” Neil murmurs after a lengthy silence, “thank you.”

“There is nothing to thank me for.”

“Hmm, I wonder.”

When Andrew finally opens his eyes again, he feels a stab of uneasiness at the pit of his stomach, his heart throttled, a hurricane in his veins.

He wonders if this is how missing someone feels like.

“Good night, Andrew,” Neil says. “I…”

Andrew waits, wonders if Neil wants to say what Andrew can’t bring himself to say, wonders if Neil aches with the same longing as he does.

“Happy new year,” Neil says instead.

I want to see you, Andrew doesn’t say.

He lets his eyes fall shut again, taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly, inaudibly. He wonders, and wonders, and wonders.

“Happy new year, Neil.”

*

On Thursday, Andrew wakes up gasping for breath hours before the sun is set to rise in the dusky winter horizon.

On Friday, he wakes up punching through air to chase away the phantom touches snaking down his legs.

On Saturday, he wakes up with an ache flaring from his once broken arm.

On Sunday, he gives up sleeping.

On Monday, he wakes up dead.

That’s not quite it.

He’s not _dead_ , but it feels like he isn’t alive, either.

He peels his eyes open, and it takes a while for him to realize that he is awake.

Even with his memory, he can’t remember the last time when he woke up with a hollow, gaping chest.

That’s not it either.

Andrew detests the colder seasons, and it’s not just because of the temperature. The longer nights, the memories associated with them – they’re like iron chains around his ankles, and the ground beneath him is a pit of quicksand.

His skin has felt like it’s been ballooning bigger and bigger, sagging around him like dead weight. The pain emanating from the old injury of his right arm, induced by the cold season, makes it all too easy to skid off that slippery slope and plummet into an abyss.

That’s not it either.

He knows, objectively, that his brain is resorting to an old coping mechanism, but he doesn’t try to stop it like he’s learned to do over the years.

He blinks, slowly, focusing on the web-like cracks in one corner of the ceiling. He hears Nicky puttering around the apartment, getting ready for school. It means that Andrew himself is late for work.

He goes through the motions of getting ready for the day; he brushes his teeth, pulls on his winter attire, stares at his breakfast, drives them to school. Nicky talks, but stops mid-sentence when he glances at Andrew. Andrew is almost surprised that he even noticed that Nicky has been speaking to him; everything sounds muffled, indistinct. The drive to school is a gap in his memory, which - is never a good sign.

He is aware that Nicky is looking at him intently now, concern rolling off of him in waves that submerge Andrew, but Andrew doesn’t do anything about it. He isn’t even sure if he’s breathing, but that’s silly; if he isn’t, he would be dead by now.

Nicky leaves him in the car.

It feels unbearably cold - he’s turned the engine off. He can’t make himself move and do anything about the temperature. He knows he needs to go in; first period is starting soon.

He stares, and stares, and stares, at nothing and at everything. Minutes go by, hours, days, months; time is an odium that melds together when he is like this. Vaguely, he takes note of how parched his throat is; he hasn’t drunk or eaten anything since the night before.

He wonders what his therapist would say to this regression. So much for _I’m honored to be part of the progress you’ve made these past few years, Andrew_.

It takes him a long moment to register that there is a knock on the passenger side window. Everything seems opaque, his senses dulled like he’s trapped inside a membrane.

The doors are unlocked, so Neil slips into the passenger seat, sighing as he shuts the door with a soft click.

Neil, Andrew thinks. Neil, Neil, Neil. His brain, wrapped in smog, tries to connect Neil’s current presence to the last time Andrew had seen him, which was three weeks ago.

Andrew had been thinking about the prospect of seeing Neil’s face throughout the duration of winter break like a child waiting for their birthday present. Countless of times before, he had imagined the way they would fall into their normal rhythm, as natural as the tide in the presence of the moon.

His feelings spark and die out, coughing and sputtering like a lighter that is running out of gas. He is absently aware that he usually reacts differently around Neil, but he can’t quite bring himself to think about how it normally is, if there ever was a ‘normal’ or if it was just all in his imagination.

He hasn’t had a bad day in a while now, and it’s made him complacent. Maybe this is punishment for his carelessness.    

A shiver wracks Neil’s frame as he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his coat. “It’s pretty chilly,” he comments idly.

Through the haze in his mind, Andrew tries to think of the reason Neil might be here with him. All that comes out of his mouth is a croaky, “Why.” The singular word is scraped out of his throat, and he doesn’t recognize his own voice.  

“Why what?” Neil asks, far too gentle for Andrew’s ears.

Why are you here, why am I here, why am I so numb even though you’re here with me. These questions drift around in his mind, bumping against his skull and floating around in the vacant space of his body.

“Nicky told me you’d be here,” Neil says, as if that might answer Andrew’s ambiguous question.

Silence pervades the space of the car, taking shape and pressing down against Andrew’s ears.

“I don’t want to be here,” he says eventually, reed thin.

“Okay,” Neil says, a cold rag over a forehead burning with fever. “Can you drive?”

Andrew shakes his head, a barely-there motion. His eyes swirl.

“Okay,” Neil says again, opening the door to get out and closing it again before going around the car to head over to the driver’s side. Andrew’s mind is a fog, but his body climbs over the console, lethargically, until he’s crumpled into the passenger seat like a ragdoll.

Neil slides in behind the wheel, adjusts the seat and rearview mirror, twists the ignition, and cranks the heat up. Warmth floods into Andrew’s cheeks.

The first few minutes are witness to Neil’s stilted, too-careful driving, like he’s still familiarizing himself with the idiosyncrasies of the Maserati’s inner workings. The rest of the drive is smooth sailing though, Neil relaxing against the leather, eyes needle sharp on the road. In a different state of mind, Andrew would have said, _how long has it been since you drove a car_. As it is, Andrew barely has the energy to move his lips.    

“Is there a place you’d like to go to?” Neil asks, snipping through the cottony fringe of Andrew’s head.  

“Nowhere,” Andrew says. “Anywhere.”

He thinks he said these words. He must have, because he sees Neil nod, hands firm on the wheel.

Andrew’s mind wanders. The Maserati is built for grand touring, powered by a three-liter twin-turbocharged V6 engine with a layout of sixty degrees, a displacement of two-thousand nine-hundred and seventy-nine cubic centimeters, and a horsepower of four-hundred and twenty-four at five-thousand seven-hundred and fifty revolutions per minute. It has a turning power of four-hundred and twenty-eight foot-pounds at one-thousand and fifty revolutions per minute, which means that an applied force of four-hundred and twenty-eight pounds on a foot-long wrench would result in a four-hundred and twenty-eight pounds of torque. The Maserati has a wheelbase of a hundred and eighteen inches, a length of a hundred and ninety-five inches, a width of seventy-six inches, and a height of fifty-seven inches.

Andrew knows all about cars. One morning when he was nineteen, he went to a car dealer and used the ninety thousand dollars he got from Tilda’s life insurance money on the Maserati he currently has. He had felt almost content back then, the knowledge that he could hop into his car and speed away into any direction he wished a comforting thought, like he had spotted the faint rays of the sun on a distant hill and decided that he could escape there.

He screws his eyes shut against the glare of the day, the thrum of the Maserati spreading through the heaviness of his skin like it’s passing through gelatin, painfully slow.

When he opens his eyes again, face canted towards Neil against the headrest, the car is idle. Morning has yawned into noon, the sun bleaching everything white, the undulating tremor of the sea glittering like a sleet of aluminum.

 _The sea_ , his mind whispers. The clock on the dashboard tells him that it is almost two o’clock. He wonders how much time Neil has spent driving.

Neil has his arms folded against the steering wheel, eyes trained on the windshield. There is the squawk of seagulls in the distance, and the clouds are a light grey color, sailing at a languorous pace. Andrew tells his body to shift until his back is between the window and the seat, until Neil is in his direct line of sight.

“My mother died on the beach,” Neil says, almost to himself.

“My father had gotten to her when we were in Seattle,” he continues, eyes fixated on a point beyond the horizon. “We managed to escape and made it to California. By the time I realized that anything was wrong, she was already gasping her last breath.”

“I burned her body,” he says, expression faraway, voice empty, “and I buried her bones. I don’t know if they’re still out there, on some beach in California.”

Neil slumps against his seat, but there is a key of tension in his shoulders.

“She told me to never look back, and to never stop running, but you know what I did instead?” A humorless smile tugs at his lips. “I called my uncle, even though my mother had never liked asking her family for anything.”

His smile withers. “Sometimes I hated her. I didn’t understand why she didn’t accept her family’s offer of help. She was always so stubborn, so I guess it might have been something to do with her pride.”

The teeth of the waves flash like white buds, crawling up the shore and falling back into the ocean.

“But other times, all I feel when I think about her is grief.”

Neil turns to look at Andrew, eyes glazed over. “’Why did she have to suffer because of me?’ It’s the sort of question that used to keep me awake at night and made me wonder if there was a point to me being alive.”

“There is,” Andrew says, the clearest he’s sounded all day.

Neil’s shoulders droop. “I know,” he says, dandelion seeds wafting in a breeze.

Neil rubs his eyes with the heel of his palms. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to say all that. I don’t even know why I brought us here.” He rakes a hand through his hair, sighing. “It’s really self-centered of me to talk about my issues right now, so I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Andrew manages to say. He couldn’t say that he’s almost glad Neil told him all that; it has given his mind a point to focus on, Neil’s voice tethering him like the string of a kite.

Neil’s eyes do that little thing that makes it look like he’s smiling softly even though the rest of his face remain unmoved.

“Would you like me to send you home?”

Andrew considers it, blinking slowly, his brain sifting through the images of the unfinished book on his nightstand, the cold sheets on his bed, the cracks in the ceiling of his room.

He shakes his head no. 

“Okay,” Neil says. He taps a finger against the steering wheel as he thinks of a different suggestion. “I need to go home and feed King,” he finally says. “Would you like to see her? I think she misses you. She hasn’t seen you in a while, after all.”

Andrew doesn’t bring up how he’s only met Neil’s cat once, because he knows what Neil actually means. He wonders, briefly, if Neil is being roundabout for Andrew’s sake or for his own.

Andrew nods. They leave the beach, and Andrew watches how Neil looks back, once.

*

They ride the elevator up to Neil’s apartment in the type of soothing silence that Andrew has grown to associate with Neil. When they enter, Neil takes his coat, guides him to the plush sofa in the living room, and taps away on his own phone for a while. After he sets it aside, he tells Andrew, “I told Wymack this morning we wouldn’t be able to make it to work today, and he just told me that Nicky can sleep at his place tonight. Kevin and Nicky will have a sleepover party or something. Maybe Dan will join them too, who knows? They’ll be pillaging the streets tonight, I’m sure.”

Andrew drags his eyes from the bare walls to stare at Neil in the face.

“Bad joke?” Neil says, the smidge of a wry smile on his lips. He doesn’t look disappointed or discouraged when Andrew doesn’t respond though, his smile taking a softer edge. “Can I get you something to eat?”

Andrew shakes his head.

“Okay, but I want you to drink some water. Are you alright with that?”

This time, Andrew nods an affirmative, and Neil fetches him a bottle of mineral water from the kitchen. After that, Neil finds him pillows and blankets, fussing over him without really fussing over him. King totters over towards them at some point, plying Neil for some food. While Neil is in the kitchen, his movements barely audible, Andrew finishes his water at a snail’s pace. On the coffee table is a paperback – _The Brothers Karamazov_. Like the copy of _The Idiot_ that he once saw in the same spot, it is the Russian version.

The sun sets, and Andrew doesn’t move from his perch on the couch. King crawls over to him once, kneading his thigh and chirruping for attention.

Neil brings him a mug of warm milk, which he manages to drink half of, and gives him space while keeping close. The most conspicuous thing Neil does is turn on the television at a low volume to watch the evening news. Other than that, Neil hardly makes any noise as he goes about his night, and only talks to Andrew to ask if there is anything he can get or do for him.

Andrew shakes his head no for both of the times Neil asks him.

“Okay,” Neil says gently. “Good night, Andrew.”

Burrowed under the blankets that were procured for him earlier, Andrew watches Neil saunter down the hallway, flicking the lights off, King trailing after him. It remains, the image, behind his retinas when he pinches his eyes shut, when he plunges, exhausted, into a dreamless sleep.

*

He wakes up to the sound of running water. It’s dark when he opens his eyes, but it isn’t the oppressive darkness that has been consuming him for the past few days. He doesn’t know what time it is, and it sends a spike of panic up his throat for a minute, before the sound of a door opening and closing has it receding just as quickly as it came. The light at the foyer switches on and the front door is unlocked. A faded noise like rustling paper is followed by a hushed, “I’ll be back in a bit. Look after him while I’m gone, okay?” A meow, a “That’s my girl,” and a kissy noise, and then all is silent again. His eyes adjust to the dimness. King hops onto the coffee table, tail swishing as she observes Andrew observing her over the blanket that covers his face up to his nose.   

When Neil returns, Andrew feels fully awake, and he has a better grasp on the passage of time. King leaps off the table and skitters towards Neil.

“Did you take good care of him?” Andrew hears Neil whisper. There is the snick and thump of the refrigerator door opening and closing and the pad of light footsteps drawing nearer. A bottle of Gatorade is placed right in front of Andrew on the table before Neil says, “Oh, you’re awake.” He nudges the drink. “This is for you. I can bring you something else if you want.”

Andrew peels the blanket off his mouth and blinks drowsily at Neil when he sits on the coffee table facing the couch, his back to the entertainment center.

“I hope you slept well,” Neil continues, unavailingly quiet, “and that I didn’t wake you up when I went out.”

Andrew scans him in the semi-darkness. Dawn is on the horizon, a nebulous touch to the blue that washes over the room. Neil is in a winter running attire, face still glistening with sweat, and he is wearing...shorts. It’s the first time Andrew has seen him in one, and it takes all of his already-diminished energy supply to tear his gaze away from the sinewy muscles of Neil’s long legs.

“You run,” Andrew says, voice scratchy with disuse, like rusted metal.

“I do,” Neil says. “I like it, actually.”

“It’s still dark,” Andrew points out, his words slurred together a little.

Neil looks outside through the gaps between the curtains, the sky an interfusion of violet and grey.  

“I like it when the sun hasn’t risen yet, or when it’s just risen,” Neil says, his voice distant, tranquil, like Andrew is looking at the full moon on a starless night.

“The whole city is quiet, and it feels like I’m all alone in the world.” He turns his hands, palm up, and drops his gaze towards them. “Being alone is synonymous with being safe, because there’s no one else to hurt me - that’s what my mother taught me.”

He falls silent, and Andrew keeps his eyes on him. King winds herself around Neil’s ankles, butting her head against his calf.

“The hour before sunrise is still my favorite time of the day, but…” Pausing, Neil lifts his eyes to meet Andrew’s. “But sometimes I wonder if I really am safe, all alone with no one to rely on.”

Listlessly, Andrew stares at him, then closes his eyes. They have both been hurt by others, by the ones they trusted and by the ones who were supposed to protect them. But Andrew knows that he is not like those people - he would drive a knife to his own heart before he allows himself to be like them - and neither is Neil.

When he opens his eyes again, he finds Neil staring at him.

“Neil,” he says, voice stretched thin.

“What is it?” Neil prompts, just as quiet.

 _Rely on me_.

Andrew swallows the words down. He won’t say it now, not when he is like this, but he hopes that he will be able to say it to Neil soon.  

“You are wearing shorts,” he says instead, still sluggish, “in the middle of winter.”

“I have sports leggings that I wear when I run in winter, but they’re all in the hamper,” Neil says, looking down at his legs. “I’m not trying to get sick, I just haven’t done the laundry yet.”

Leggings. Andrew doesn’t know which ones are more dangerous to his sensibilities - leggings or shorts. His mind conjures the memory of the training room here, in Neil’s apartment, and the treadmill in it. He wants to continue the banter by pointing out its existence – it should be a better alternative than going outside for a run – but his voice cords aren’t cooperating.

After a beat of silence, Neil flashes Andrew a small smile. “Would you like to take a shower? Or do you want to sleep some more?”

Andrew ruminates the two options and whispers to Neil that he’s decided to go with the former.

Standing up, Neil says, “There’s a guest bathroom down the hall, and there should be some towels under the sink. I’ll find you something to change into.”

He leaves to go to his bedroom, and Andrew takes his time sitting up, flexing his fingers and inhaling deeply. He’s feeling – alright. More present, more like himself than he felt yesterday.

Neil has just placed a change of clothes on the sink counter when Andrew steps into the pristine bathroom.

“Nobody ever really uses this bathroom, so all the shampoo and body wash are pretty much untouched.” He looks at Andrew, expression neutral but eyes gentle. “Take your time. I’ll be taking a shower too, and then I’m making some breakfast.”

Andrew nods, not really able to get his mouth to work to its normal capacity just yet, but Neil accepts it and turns to leave.

Andrew snags the sleeve of Neil’s sports jacket, and Neil immediately stops, tilting his head to the side in silent question.

Andrew stews over the words he wants to say, the things he wants to convey, but he has never been particularly good at talking, at putting a name to his feelings, because he is not used to harboring any sentiments towards anything or anybody. Emotions are a sign of weakness, and Andrew has learned long ago that he can never afford to be weak.

But maybe he has been wrong.

Neil waits patiently, still staring at him.

Finally, Andrew says, “You don’t have to.”

A tiny crease appears between Neil’s eyebrows, a sign of his confusion as he searches Andrew’s face.

“You don’t have to do any of this,” Andrew tries again, fingers twisted into the fabric of Neil’s jacket.

The crease dissolves, and understanding has Neil’s features softening.

“I don’t,” he agrees. “But I want to.”  

Pressing his lips together, Andrew lets his gaze fall away from Neil’s too-clear eyes.

“Will you let me?” Neil asks, achingly honest, head bowed closer to Andrew’s.

Impossible as it is, Neil is choosing Andrew, even when he is in this deplorable state, and Neil will continue to choose him if he allows it.

The last time Andrew had let something in, he had almost died. But he isn’t a thirteen year old anymore, puncturing a knife through his skin and plundering for a piece of false happiness, and he isn’t an eighteen year old anymore, building an iron fortress around himself and baring his teeth to the world.

He wants Neil to rely on him, and maybe he wants to rely on Neil too.

“Yes,” he says.

“Okay,” Neil says. He extends a hand, both an offer and a request in one simple gesture, and Andrew slots his hand into Neil’s before he can think too much about it.

For the first time in weeks, Andrew feels warmth blooming into his skin, seeping down to his very bones. Neil gives his hand a gentle squeeze, then reluctantly lets go, like he’s afraid that Andrew might vanish if he does. He closes the door behind him after casting one final glance at Andrew.

Andrew flexes his hand, thinks about how stupid it is, that he still wants to be wanted, as if he hasn’t learned anything from the past.

The shower brings him back to earth, water sluicing down his skin like rivers at the first breath of spring. He dries himself off with one of the huge, fluffy towels from under the sink and puts on the t-shirt and sweatpants that Neil laid out for him. He brushes his teeth after finding an unopened pack of toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, washing away the last of the sticky, grimy feeling that comes hand in hand with the bad days.

Folding the clothes he wore yesterday and placing them on the counter, Andrew stares at his armbands. He then looks at his reflection in the foggy mirror, at the sallowness of his skin, but mostly he takes note of how his eyes don’t appear hollow anymore.

He leaves the armbands on top of his clothes and cuts the lights off.

When he steps out into the hallway, music floats into his ears, hushed, and it lures him to the kitchen like a bee to a garden of flowers.

A battered radio is perched up on the counter next to the microwave, looking out of place in the minimalist, modern space, and the blinds are raised on the windows near the sink, the early morning sunlight flooding in. In front of the kitchen island, Neil is swaying from side to side to the melody, his giant cat nestled in his arms. He doesn’t notice Andrew’s presence, not until he does a little pirouette and halts in the middle of the twirl, his eyes landing on Andrew.

“Oh,” he says, a light pink dusting his cheeks. “Good morning again.”

King meows, squirming in his arms, and he deposits her into one of the stools.

“King says hello, too,” Neil says with a half-smile. His hair is curled at the ends, damp from his shower, and the white sweater he’s wearing is a few sizes too big on him, revealing the looping scar that runs from the base of his throat down to his collarbones. He doesn’t seem bothered by this though, scratching the back of King’s ears as he looks at Andrew.

“Pancakes?”

He looks silken, fine-spun, all his sharp edges disintegrated and replaced by gossamer softness; the tail end of a daydream.

But this isn’t a dream, and Neil isn’t a concoction of Andrew’s imagination.

“Yes,” he says, keeping his arms turned towards himself, and Neil gets started on making breakfast. If he notices the lack of armbands, he’s not showing it.

“There’s coffee too, if you want,” Neil says, motioning his chin towards the pot of coffee on the other end of the counter, freshly brewed judging from the steam rising from it.

Andrew fixes himself a mug, adding spoonfuls of sugar from the container that Neil slides his way after he whisks some into the pancake batter that he’s preparing. Claiming the bar stool next to King, Andrew takes a sip of his coffee and relishes the burn on his tongue. After a while, he starts running his hand through King’s thick fur. Her purrs are soothing, as is the way she bumps her nose into his palm, and it distracts him from the apprehension that is silently wracking through his nerves.

Humming along to the songs that play on the radio, Neil moves around the kitchen with calm efficiency. Andrew stares at him all the while – he has three weeks to catch up on, after all.

The lilting tunes, the gentle sunlight spilling into the kitchen, the smell of coffee beans and pancakes, the vibrations flowing from King’s body to Andrew’s palm, the quiet blue of Neil’s eyes – they ground him in a way that he’s not used to, tender, unassuming, but it’s – nice, he decides.  

“I don’t make them often, but I think these turned out pretty okay,” Neil says after some time, standing across the island and placing a fork and a plate in front of Andrew, the latter stacked with pancakes. “I’m going to go change, but do you want me to call Wymack and say that you’re not coming in today? You can stay here if you want, or I can send you home if that’s what you prefer.” He sends Andrew a gentle, barely-there smile. “Just let me know what you need, okay?”     

Andrew thinks about it for a while.

“I will go to work,” he says.

Neil accepts this with a nod. “You better eat the pancakes, then.”

Andrew ignores the way his hand trembles when he reaches out for the fork. Neil freezes, the air immediately sucked out of the room. His pupils are black pinholes, his face completely still.   

Andrew lets him stare at the thin, white lacerations crisscrossing the pale skin on the underside of his forearm, proof of his desperation to hold onto Cass.

Neil moves closer to him, hands furled into fists at his sides. He makes an aborted gesture, like he wants to reach out but has decided against it. Andrew doesn’t know what to feel about that.

“Do you…” Neil starts, then breaks off. He swallows, jaw ticking, Andrew’s eyes following the movement of his Adam’s apple, the pale column of his throat. “Do you still do it?”

Andrew shakes his head.

Neil nods, twice, his face breaking into a complicated expression.

“I’m glad you don’t,” he admits quietly.

Andrew parts his dry lips, and it takes a while for the words to come tumbling out.

“I am, too.”

“Yeah?” Neil says softly, eyes thawing, his shoulders wilting like those three words from Andrew have uncorked the bottle of tension in his body and allowed the content to leak out, like those three words have soothed a worry that he didn’t even know existed, like those three words make a whole world of difference to him.

Coming from Andrew, they do.

He sometimes wonders how they are both still alive, with their torn up skin and wretched pasts and distorted mindsets. He wonders how it could all be worth it, how Neil dances in the kitchen with his cat and goes for runs in the mornings, how Andrew himself devours books and drinks hot chocolate and plants flowers with Bee and spends Friday nights with Nicky and Kevin and spars weekly with Renee, how he still yearns to have the gnawing hole inside his chest filled with something, anything.  

On the bar stool next to him, King has curled up and fallen asleep. The old radio continues its stream of melodies, and the steel refrigerator rumbles lowly. He and Neil are both here, breathing and standing.

When he reaches out, Neil meets him halfway.

*

On a Tuesday morning in late April after their daily briefing, Neil pulls him aside on their way to their respective classrooms. With a smile sneaking into the corners of his lips, he hooks a finger around one of Andrew’s belt loops, tugging at it as he says, “Ask me to the dance.”

Andrew has had a lot of experience with rejecting people’s demands and requests, deriving a sense of pleasure and assurance from the fact that he has every right to say no, that it is within his power to make decisions regarding himself, that he will never be coerced into doing anything he doesn’t want to do ever again. But when Neil had said that, Andrew hadn’t wanted to object, and a part of him has always realized that he doesn’t say no to Neil because he knows that Neil will never ask for more than Andrew could give. Denying Neil’s requests seems like a waste of time anyway, when Neil is looking at him like that. Besides, they both have never been to prom.

So he asks Neil to the dance in the flattest tone he can manage, and Neil says yes with the most open smile Andrew has seen on him.

Chaperoning means that they have to police the students’ behaviors and patrol the school grounds and buildings for most of the night, but Neil doesn’t seem to mind; he doesn’t even try to contain his delight at getting to spend time with Andrew at a school event. For someone who always stashes away his emotions like a thief with their loot, Neil wears anger on his sleeves and joy like a coveted jewelry that he pins dearly to his chest. Andrew finds both enrapturing in equal measure.  

Kevin and Matt aren’t seniors, but since their girlfriends are, they’re attending prom, much to Nicky’s envy and endless whining. _You can get married as many times as you want_ , he tells Kevin during dinner on Friday, _but you only get one chance when it comes to your senior prom. The fact that you and Matt are getting two is, frankly speaking, homophobic_.

It turns into a full-mode sulk when he discovers that Andrew and Neil are chaperoning and leaving him to spend the night alone, but his focus shifts when he realizes that Andrew and Neil are going _together? Like, together, together?! When did that happen? This is a joke, right? You guys, I’m going to lose ten bucks and a bag of gummy worms because of this!_    

Which is how Andrew and Neil discover that the students have had a bet going on about Neil’s romantic interests; Nicky had placed his bets on Moreau, while only a few others had their money on Andrew. Other notable postulations included Reynolds and Dermott.

The only takeaway from that - for Andrew, at least - is that the kids need to find better ways to occupy their time, and that they all have incredibly terrible intuition and observational skills.

“Hey, if you guys want to fool around in the car, don’t do it in the parking lot at school,” Neil tells the two students they caught making out in the backseat of a red hatchback. “And I hope that you guys remember what Ms. Dermott’s taught you in sex ed.”

Mortified, the kids smooth over their rumpled suit and dress, mumbling their goodbyes before driving away.

With his hands on his hips, Neil watches the taillights disappear around a corner, an amused smile on his lips.

“Proud of yourself?” Andrew asks.

“Just glad that I’m not a teenager anymore is all,” Neil says, affecting innocence.

“I would be glad too, if I dressed up the way you did as a teenager.”

“That reminds me,” Neil taps a finger to his chin, pretending to think, “I need to think of a punishment for Phil for showing you old pictures of me.”

“You refusing to talk to him for two days was punishment enough for him, I think,” Andrew drawls.

Neil’s expression softens, all pretenses falling off. “And to think that people call you a monster.”

Andrew levels him an unamused stare. “You are the only one who thinks I am not.”

“And I’m the only one who’s right,” Neil says without a single trace of irony.

Unable to deal with Neil’s senseless fondness at the moment, Andrew pushes past him, trekking across the parking lot and courtyard; they’ve finished their rounds and can head back to the gym. The daffodils at the stairs behind the main building have fully blossomed, glowing yellow even at night.

Music leaks through the windows of the gym, and Neil sashays to the rhythm, somehow managing to keep up with Andrew’s strides.

Andrew lifts an eyebrow when he hears Neil singing along under his breath.

“You know ‘Dancing Queen’?”

“Who doesn’t?” Neil says. “I may not know Kanye West, but I know ABBA.”

They’re outside the gym doors now, but neither of them enter. The song transitions into a ballad, something calm and much too sentimental. Andrew clenches and unclenches his jaw, curls and uncurls his fingers, watching Neil minutely bob his head along to the melody.

“May I have this dance,” Andrew asks, poker-faced and without any inflection in his voice.

The monotonous delivery startles a laughter out of Neil. He is a sight to behold, with his midnight blue suit and unbridled smile.

“You may,” he tells Andrew after his laughter subsides, eyes gleaming with mirth.

Andrew guides Neil’s hands to his shoulders and settles his own on Neil’s waist.

“Okay?” he asks.

“More than okay,” Neil says.

They move slowly, bodies barely swaying, Neil staring into Andrew’s eyes all the while.

“I thought you didn’t dance,” Neil murmurs.

“I don’t,” he says plainly.

Neil hums, bumping his nose against Andrew’s, eyes fluttering shut.

“I wonder what Nicky is doing right now,” he mumbles.

“Behaving himself, if he knows what is good for him.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t get him a babysitter for the night,” Neil teases.

Andrew squeezes his hips in retaliation.

Neil, because he is Neil, isn’t deterred in the slightest. “I’m glad you’re giving him a little more freedom,” he says. “Going to Germany for the summer study abroad program will be good for him.”

Andrew doesn’t argue against this, but he doesn’t agree with it either; Neil had already been intolerable enough after Andrew had finally given in and allowed Nicky to sign up for the program.

“It’s definitely better than to spend it here collecting CEUs like I am,” Neil continues, sighing.

Andrew is suddenly glad that Neil has his eyes closed - for one thing, it gives him the opportunity to stare at him as much as he wants to; for another, it keeps Neil from seeing the trace of fear that flashes through his face, a drop of dye in clear water.

He keeps his voice detached as he says, “Feel like running away, Mr. Josten?”

The soul of a smile curls around Neil’s lips. “Only if you come with me, Mr. Minyard.”

Taking the words as the promise that they are, Andrew lets his eyes fall shut. He feels the spill of Neil’s hair against his forehead, the tickle of his eyelashes against his brows, the warmth of his steady breath against his mouth. Like this, with his vision sealed away, with Neil in his hands and him in Neil’s, it feels like they are untouched by time; the two of them, alone in the universe.

 

****

“Check the eggs before you take that case.”

“I know, you’ve reminded me already.”

“And yet you still pay it no heed.”

“If you get out of the trolley and check them yourself, you wouldn’t need to waste your breath reminding me.”

Andrew hums, drumming his fingers against the cool metal of the cart. “Sounds like a lot of work.”

Neil rolls his eyes and passes Andrew a case of eggs from the freezer. “And we wouldn’t want you to overexert yourself, would we?”

“We would not,” Andrew confirms dryly.

Neil hip-checks the cart, jostling Andrew and the bags of vegetables around his feet, but the ghost of a smile on Neil’s lips betrays his delight.

Neil continues to steer the cart through the store and Andrew continues to grab items off the shelves.

“How many of those do we need?” Neil asks when Andrew reaches for three colossal packets of Dum Dums.

Andrew shrugs; Neil lifts an eyebrow, but doesn’t put the lollipops back. Once he quits smoking, Andrew will need a substitution for when his mouth and fingers itch for a cigarette.

“Oh,” Neil says, “we need some cat food – a different brand, maybe, since Prince doesn’t like the one that King eats.”

Prince Pawdme, the cat they adopted a couple of months ago, his name proudly bestowed by one Nicholas Hemmick. _Aaron didn’t even ask for my input when he named his daughters_ , he had complained with a pout a long time ago, and Neil had shrugged and told him that he could name his next cat. More recently, Nicky had skyped them one night, busting out a list of ridiculous names instead of studying for the exam he had for his marketing class. Aaron’s twins – now two and a half years old – will one day be glad to know that their dad’s cousin wasn’t consulted when they were named. That said, Prince Pawdme is a slightly less stupid name than Cameron's suggested Sir Fat Cat McCatterson.

Before Andrew can reply with a scathing remark about Neil’s attachment to his cats, Neil gives the cart a starting push and hikes himself onto the bottom rack, grinning as they whip down the aisle. They skid to a stop in front of a canned soup display, nearly toppling it over, but Neil simply laughs, unconcerned of the reproachful looks they garnered from a few of the customers as they skated by.

Warmth blooms through Andrew’s chest, suffusing through his skin slowly, sweetly, like honey, lingering between his organs. He doesn’t realize he’s smiling until Neil, quiescent now, skims the tip of his fingers over his left cheek. The first time he smiled in front of him, Neil had reached out and gingerly poked the exact same spot.

“I didn’t know you had a dimple,” he had said softly, pupils blown and lips parted, mesmerized.

“Stop staring,” he tells Neil now, which is – hypocritical, since he can’t seem to stop staring at Neil too.

Neil cups the side of Andrew’s face, stroking his thumb over his cheek.

“Can’t I enjoy the view?”

“There is nothing to enjoy,” Andrew says flatly.

The small upturn at the corner of Neil’s lips carries a whisper of affection and calm happiness. “I disagree,” he says. “There is plenty to enjoy, in my opinion.”

“Perhaps you should keep your opinions to yourself.”

“Perhaps,” Neil says indulgently. “But I’ve never been good at keeping my mouth shut, not unless I’m given a proper incentive.”

Andrew shifts a little, bussing a kiss against the inner side of Neil’s wrist. The flutter of Neil’s pulse caresses his lips.

“What about here?” Neil says, pointing to his own mouth, mischief crinkling the corner of his eyes. The fact that there isn’t anybody around them isn’t lost to Andrew, and he knows that Neil is only saying this because he is aware of it as well.

Andrew gives him an unamused stare, but he knots his fingers into the collar of Neil’s hooded sweater and tugs him forward for a firm peck on the mouth.

Janet Fitch once wrote that _it is the century of the displaced person; you can never go home_.

Andrew knows all about being out of place, drifting on the fringe of existence with nothing else but his fists and instincts to fall back on. If it means he won’t be taken advantage of and left empty and bleeding, he’ll take being unanchored and displaced over anything.  

When Andrew pulls back, Neil smiles at him, blue eyes half-lidded and soft. He looks as serene and content as Andrew feels; moonlight over the surface of the ocean, a night’s repose. His hand is a gentle pressure against Andrew’s face.

Well, Andrew thinks, maybe not anything.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t expect this chapter to be twice as long as the other chapters, but I hope it makes up for the huge break between now and the last update. I had written most of the scenes months ago, but I didn’t start tying them all together until more recently, thanks to me being in a bad headspace for the past few months. With that said, I can’t believe I managed to finish this! I only started writing this because I wanted something soft and romantic-ish and not too serious, where Andrew and Neil are older and more…well-adjusted? healed? than they thought they could ever be, and so this nonsensical AU was born lmao. 
> 
> But really, I couldn’t have done it without all of you. The kudos, the comments, the messages on tumblr – they mean the world to me, and your support is the only reason I managed to see this fic to the end. This might not be the ending you were hoping for, but I’d love to hear your feedback regardless, so let me know what you think! 
> 
> My [tumblr](http://nakasomethingkun.tumblr.com). Feel free to hmu! My askbox is always open :)


End file.
